I grew up listening to a lot of Ray Charles and ’60s rock, thanks to my father, and then my brothers got me in to KISS and whatnot, so I guess that’s where I got my first taste for music.
I’m good at melody – I’ll write the top-line melody and ideal words I want to go with it. But I’m not that good at writing lyrics. I bounce those back and forth with songwriters or someone who can sing.
I always just sit down at the piano and make the main hook—what I want the track to be about melodically—and then I’ll build everything else around that. But growing up, I did not play any instruments.
If I wanted to make a quick buck, there’s far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won’t be remembered the same way.
I travel with a bunch of battery packs because I don’t always have time to charge my phone at the hotel room when I’m traveling. I always change them, so I never run out of battery.
To me, I’m always trying to look for the energy, to imagine in being played on the dance floor. I guess that’s the most important thing in making music for me.
When it comes to electronic music, I started listening to a lot of Daft Punk, way before I knew what house music was, and then progressed into a lot of Steve Angello, Eric Prydz, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Laidback Luke.
