It is midnight, holding the phone up against my ear it crackles with static. The voice on the other end is whispering: an effort to disguise his voice. We’re talking about the music industry’s dirtiest secret since Milli Vanilli were shamed for lip syncing.
Okay, it’s actually the middle of the day, the line is perfectly clear, and my informant is more than happy to discuss the controversial topic of ghost-writers in the EDM scene.
This may be news to some; but many prominent acts don’t write their own music, in any case, not all of it. From a business standpoint it makes total sense. A DJ like Armin van Buuren is the EDM equivalent of a rockstar; traveling around the world playing sold-out gigs. Does he really have time to tinker in the studio? Armin has a team of people that collaborate on his tracks, some of them simply responsible for creating loops.
But for those on the dancefloor, it’s much more of an emotive issue. EDM is, after all, about emotion; that euphoric rush a song can incite. By default we associate that feeling with the producer. To then find out it’s a made-to-order track, well, you end up feeling cheated, and a little bit silly.
The person I’m chatting to is a producer himself, and although he says he doesn’t ghost-write, he does help others to finish tracks. He says he adds some finishing flourishes, and tightens the production. Fair enough. But this is exactly what makes the topic so thorny, where do you draw the line?
Most producers have their tracks mastered by another professional; this at least is common knowledge. And, yes, to a certain extent it’s understandable, if not acceptable that big name producers have help, but what about those producers who are completely manufactured?
Dash Berlin, my spy tells me, is a manufactured super-star DJ, and just like any pop fairy-tale: ‘they found him in a record shop; he had the right look.’ This raises an interesting point. Hypothetically speaking, a wannabe DJ could pay a talented, cash-strapped producer to ghost-write an album. And with the right management, marketing, and positioning; this nobody could be somebody very quickly. Ultimately they’re buying their profile.
It’s a struggle to turn a track into Dollar signs: the music gets the gigs, and this is where DJs make bank. More gigs equal more money and in turn, less time in the studio.
And produce you have to. DJs make a career out of picking music, essentially getting paid for their taste. But any spin-doctor knows that to get onto the bigger line-ups (read bigger pay days) they need to produce their own tunes. There are the exceptions to the rule, of course, but number ten to one.
One of the most famous examples of a ghost-writer is Charlie May. He was happy to craft soundscapes in the studio while DJ Sasha belted them out to mammoth crowds. Some tracks include: Xpander, Scorchio, and Belfunk. He was also co-engineer of albums Airdrawndagger, Involver, and Invol2ver.
Charlie was happy to take a back seat as he wasn’t into ‘the rockstar’ life. It wasn’t a secret, look at the inside cover of any of those albums and you’ll see Charlie was credited as ‘the programmer’. But it wasn’t exactly shouted from the rooftops either. These days he has his own eponymous project.
Is it fair to expect DJs to work alone? In no other genre, do musicians work in solitude. Singers have lyricists and indeed a whole band and producers to boot. Even solo violinists have help from composers. Your average radio-friendly song is so far removed from something real, it may as well have been cooked up in a lab.
So is it really all that bad, that our favourite producers get some musical Viagra? My canary doesn’t think so: ‘It’s a brand at the end of the day. How you go about it is your business.’ I only think producers should be more open about it; lest they alienate their dancing public when the truth emerges!
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