Favorite Artist Month: Zedd

In the western continents, EDM Electronic Dance Music have had more of a underground music following. Dance Music has been very prevalent overseas in places like England, Australia, and the Spain. Dance Music has exploded in the U.S thanks to a few artists like David Guetta, Chris Harris and Zedd.

Zedd, real name Anton Zaslasvski, born in Russia and raised in German whom parents are 2 musicians. He has been playing a variety of instruments since the age of 4. Zedd has a big background in the rock genre before he started jumping into dance music. Zedd didn’t get a lot of critical acclaim early on but he did catch the ear of Skrillex. Skrillex whom is a dub-step artist caught some of Zedd’s music online and signed him to his new label. Since his signing, Zedd has been doing remixed for Lady Gaga, P. Diddy and the Black Eye Peas before working and releasing his first album.

Upon his signing, Zedd released one of my favorite dance music albums called “Clarity”. The whole album was spectactular. The album was released in 2012 and I still listen to this album from front to back until this day. The keymark songs on the album are “Spectrum” featuring Matthew Koma and “Clarity” featuring Foxes. These songs were such huge hits the featured artists career also became noticeable and they gained much success after the album’s release.

The album Clarity really opened my eyes to how incredible dance music sounded in more of a pop genre. While reconstructing his sounds and music progression I found a lot of jazz notes and a lot of inversion and chord borrowing. It really impressed me how much he knew about music and how little I knew. Maybe that's why he's in the position he is in now. This album further motivated me to finish a music degree.

Zedd’s second album is called “True Colors” which was released in 2015. This album featured artists like Selena Gomez which was the first single from the album. The album won best Dance album at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards.

Zedd is my favorite artist this month and I would wish him much more success and I still look to him for inspiration for my own music and much more.