Do DJ's owe us the bangers?

You’ve secured a ticket, your friends are on their way to you. While you’re having a pre-drink, you ask: ‘So, who’s playing tonight?’ They picked out the event, you just know that one song. Unless you’re a snob like me, that’s a super normal question. Bear with me.

You stood through two hours of music you may or may not have recognised, patiently waiting for that one track, by that one artist that made you come to the function tonight. And then, suddenly, the lights come on. Not that one track. No collective screaming. Not even a cheeky little edit. The audacity! Recently, online discussions about FISHER not playing his biggest hit (guess which one) have raised a surprisingly interesting question: when you pay to see a particular DJ, what exactly are you paying for? The tracks that made them famous, or the freedom to play whatever the hell they want?

It’s a funny contradiction, in my opinion. Electronic music has always celebrated the unexpected, the obscure B-side, the deep cut; the track you’ve never heard before but desperately need to find the morning after. Just recently I spent four hours looking for a track I found because someone played it on vinyl and I had to find it the next day. Yet somewhere along the way, we’ve started treating certain DJs like human jukeboxes. Not everywhere: smaller clubs mostly attract pretty open-minded crowds, but if we look at online discourse, can we even expect a ‘hit’ from a DJ? Should Armand van Helden always play ‘I Want Your Soul’? I mean, it is the world’s most absolute banging tune of all time.

And to be fair, it’s not entirely strange that people have these expectations. When an artist becomes known for one particular track, that song inevitably becomes part of their identity. Especially when it’s been played approximately a billion times on TikTok, in festival aftermovies and through someone’s slightly overworked bluetooth speaker at a house party. By the time you finally get to see the person responsible for it, you’ve probably imagined what hearing it live would feel like. And who can blame you? There’s something undeniably satisfying about hearing a track you love on a proper sound system, surrounded by hundreds (or thousands) of people who seem to love it just as much. That collective recognition can be a beautiful thing, even if the track itself has been rinsed to death.

What probably doesn’t help is the way we’re selling DJ sets these days. Booking fees for some big-name artists climb, ticket prices tend to follow, and then a night out feels much more like a concert than a rave. You’re watching the same artist for hours, much like you would at a pop concert. More artists are also building entire events around their own names, from headline shows to all-night-long sets, where the evening revolves around one person rather than a wider programme. When an event is marketed entirely around one artist, can we really blame the audience for expecting to hear the music that made them famous?

Of course, this looks quite different depending on which corner of electronic music you’re standing in. At a more underground club night, you might buy a ticket because you trust the programming, the sound system or the people running the place, without knowing every name on the line-up. At a major festival or a headline show, the artist’s name might be the entire reason you’re there. Neither approach is inherently better, although the person who insists on telling you they haven’t recognised a single track all night might disagree. But they do create different expectations. In one room, hearing something familiar is a pleasant surprise. In another, not hearing it might feel like you’ve been short-changed.

An acquired taste
There’s also something to be said for giving unfamiliar music a chance to grow on you. Not every record is going to make you throw your hands in the air within the first eight bars. Some tracks take a little longer to make sense, especially when they’re sandwiched between sounds you wouldn’t normally listen to. I’ve definitely caught myself wondering where a DJ was going with something, only to be completely sold ten minutes later. That’s part of what makes a good set different from a playlist of everyone’s favourite tracks: the context can make you appreciate music you’d otherwise skip after thirty seconds.

If we want artists to take risks, we also have to allow them to get it wrong occasionally. Otherwise, we might as well hand them a list of the twenty most-streamed tracks and call it a night.

Which brings me back to that record I spent four hours trying to find. I couldn’t tell you what other tracks were played, but I remember hearing it, and I remember wanting to hear it again. This tune was on repeat in my house for an entire week. Not because I’d been waiting for it all night, but because I hadn’t known it existed an hour earlier. That’s a pretty good return on a ticket for one club night, if you ask me. And I will always want to hear ‘I Want Your Soul’, too. Of course.