I Heart EDM, So What?

How a popular sound improved the way a generation creates and consumes music

I attended my first electronic dance music concert in June of 2011, the summer after I finished my sophomore year of high school. We were seeing some Swede whose name I wasn’t pronouncing right and whose musical presence on the Internet was miniscule.

I went with one friend around my age—both of us pubescent 15-year-olds — along with his older sister and her friends, all of whom were at least two years older than us. They were celebrating his sister’s birthday, I had merely been offered an extra ticket. When I asked her what kind of music it was, her response was, “You know, techno. Like European techno. Like house music. Yeah, techno.”

I then asked her what songs she liked so I could try to look them up. Her response: a hesitant “I don’t really know any of it. I’m just going because it’s something to do. And I like to dance.”

We took a chartered party bus to the Philadelphia Naval Yard, to a hollowed-out airplane hangar where this rave (as one attendee called it) was taking place. I could hear and feel the bass from outside, and through the fogged windows I could only distinguish an indivisible glob of humanness with slightly discernible arms and legs.

I entered, took a glance down at my polo shirt, pressed khakis, and boat shoes and realized I was grossly overdressed. Surrounding me, syndicates of muscle-bound meatheads, with bodies like the lovechild of Schwarzenegger and a Silverback, roamed around, draped in neon tank tops. They pursued contingents of scantily-dressed girls, clothes seemingly purchased at Baby Gap clinging to their curves. I decided I had no chance with those girls — being dressed the way I was and being a twig compared to those guys—so I settled for admiring the female scenery. Still, I couldn’t complain.

David Guetta’s work has a broad appeal, keeping him at the top of EDM culture photo by Aaron Garcia

After a little while of us standing around with the lights on and no music playing, the DJ came on. Loud electronic sounds running at 128 beats per minute filled the sweaty air, pulse-pounding “drops” marked the musical climaxes. For the next hour and a half, everyone in that building became unified, bonding with the music, the DJ, and each other. I assimilated into that human glob, and we all leapt in unison to the beat of an endless song.

Towards the end of the set, the DJ played an ineffably catchy melody, but halfway through the song he seemed to lower the music. I thought it was an accident, but I was wrong. Just as I was leaning towards my friends to ask why the DJ stopped so abruptly, I heard sultry female vocals, deep but clear:

“Oh, sometimes I get a good feeling… Get a feeling that I never never never never had before…” ►

Everyone knew the words, and I did too. (Another friend, who had started smoking weed rather young, introduced me to Pretty Lights’ “Finally Moving” a few months earlier, describing it as “the trippiest song ever, bro!”) I didn’t know it at the time, but the vocals were sampled from Etta James’ 1962 song “Something’s Got a Hold On Me”; now, with a mass of young people singing along, and I with them, the words were reinvigorated. The song sweeping us away was called “Levels.”