It was David Guetta's second year running his parties in Pacha's main room, the club I played at. Overnight the crowd stopped dancing and started filming, phones up. In the studio that next day, my production partner and I joked that this new EDM had gotten so formulaic we should just do it ourselves.
Within a month the joke was almost real. This was years before anyone thought to wear a giant Marshmello on their head. We had caricature cupcake cutouts made. We were in real talks with agents. And we made a genuine sample album, five EDM tracks, including a George Michael remix I'll defend to this day. Then we found ourselves back in the studio, planning the act. About an hour in we looked at each other and asked: do we really want to do this night after night? The answer was no. The next day, Cupcake Music died.
I still think about it often, and never with regret. It wasn't a failure, it was a realisation. The timing was right, the market was there, it was fun, and none of it was enough. I've watched the same play out in business time and time again. Someone builds for the wrong reasons, usually fast money, and it holds until the first genuinely hard week. Then the motivation runs out, because it was never really theirs. Wrong reasons don't survive contact with difficulty.
🎵 George Michael — Freedom! '90 The song that started the greatest EDM act that never was.
— Nicc