To the creative directors at Rolling Stone Italy,
After seeing your EDM diss video, I was very hurt. Elite Daily music writer, Daniel Lampert, responded with an emotionally-charged column decrying the video as insulting and hurtful. I think Daniel’s article was very well written and very well informed. EDM lovers were all insulted. We were all hurt.
So Rolling Stone, here’s why your distasteful video was embarrassing;
You’re showing your age. You deemed EDM a drug-fueled flair-out of a movement. That’s exactly what your parents said of rock and roll. While they were listening to orchestral / big band “real music,” you were eating Jimmy Hendrix’s other-worldly sounds and chasing them with every drug you could find.
You call EDM ‘fake’ music. Keep in mind: synthetic is relative. Ninety-nine percent of popular rock and roll tracks are run through the exact same filters EDM producers run synths through. The fundamental difference in the sound is minimal, from a scientific standpoint.
“But that’s popular rock and roll,” you say. “What about the real rock?” Well what about the “real” EDM? Steve Aoki, Diplo, Avicii are the popular faces of a rich musical legacy that dates back twenty, thirty, maybe even forty years.
Pointing to Avicii when referring to EDM equates to pointing to the Black Eyed Peas when referring to rap, or pointing to The Jonas Brothers when referring to rock.
Your attack is uneducated, inaccurate and hypocritical. It misses the mark when it comes to the historical and musical legacy of electronica. Please do some research.
You may be surprised at what you find. Take a listen to everything from early Carl Cox, Skream and Benga to Soulection Radio to Tobacco and Disclosure. You will hear music that is just as alive, real, authentic and emotional as rock and roll, with or without “molly.”
I’ll close by lightening the mood. I admit that lots of people only like EDM for the drugs. But let’s not forget that the same was the case for quite a number of people who went to Woodstock.
Speaking of Woodstock, the production team behind Mysteryland has announced the debut of an American EDM festival at the original Woodstock location. How ironic.
Love and kisses,
Quentin
