Simon Cowell To Create DJ Talent Show

posted in: Music News

What happens when the main stream music industry realizes that electronic music is no longer the fodder of Eminem one-liners? Or reserved for the underground clubs? The Rhiannas and Ke$has of the world start making (shitty) pop music based around traditional dance tracks, and Simon Cowell thinks making a DJ talent show will be a good idea.

Last week it was announced that Simon Cowell’s newest assault on the music industry would come in the form of a DJ talent show, hoping to find the worlds greatest DJs. Cowell also stated that DJs are the new rock stars, it feels like the right time to make this show.

While the majority of the DJ community, and EDM community at large is up in arms about their beloved culture being destroyed in the hands of the talent show mogul. I’m not as angry. Confusion would be a more appropriate word to describe my reaction to the news.

The DJ community has gone through quite the change over the past ten years. A pair of Technics turntables with a stock mixer was the universal set up, and DJs would bring their crate (remember vinyl?) full of handpicked tunes they thought were perfect for that given night. Those were the tools, everyone had them, and how you used them was what separated you from the pack. Everyone from hip hop turntablists to trance gods could play on a pair of Technics. With the advent of technology, DJ equipment evolved at a rapid pace; no longer were jockeys required to lug around heavy records from gig to gig, but they could start using CD players, and later software combined with a dummy vinyl record to manipulate their digital audio files much the same way as they used to do with traditional vinyl. Since the early days of digital, the field has changed even more. Now some jockeys are spinning on nothing more than a circuit board with a few buttons, knobs, faders and free spinning platters (an attempt to keep the disc in Disc Jockey). Which begs the question, what exactly is a DJ?

It’s a question that I can’t begin to answer, but something that the EDM community will have to figure out in this meteoric rise to the forefront of the music industry. Is Cowell up to the task? We certainly hope so.

Now, I don’t want this show to fail. In fact, I think it could have a lot of positive implications for dance music and the rapidly growing fan base. But there are so many issues that need to be addressed before this show could possibly be a success. What equipment are you required to play on? Will the show provide weekly tracks to the contestants much like American Idol, or are the contestants free to use whatever music they see fit? How do you recreate the club experience for a TV audience? Are all genres accepted? Or only the pop-house (think We Found Love) that is filling the radio these days (with some brostep-y Skrillex womps thrown in for good measure, of course). And the biggest question of all: How can one judge a DJs performance in a three-minute time slot?

Some forms of DJing will naturally shine in a three-minute format. Turntablism has long been the style associated with short, jam-packed, routines. But these routines are not really something you would expect to see in a dance club or at a festival.

The much newer style of Controllerism would do well in short segments also, and probably has more of a place in the growing dance movement sweeping the country. But would 3+ hours of this stuff really keep people dancing in a club?

So what happens to the rest of the DJ world? Will Cowell be able to accurately judge the talent of a DJ whose craft is not how fast they scratch, but the ability to take a dance floor on a musical journey through out the night?

Does the average Idol/X-Factor viewer even have enough of an attention span to appreciate longer format mixing? Let’s pretend that the viewers could actually sit still through twenty-minute mixes (let alone two hours), would they be able to grasp the technical proficiency of something like this?

What I think Cowell fails to realize, is that the rock star DJs he refers to, are not really doing any DJing. The likes of Skrillex and Deadmau5 (arguably the two biggest stars of the EDM world currently) play preplanned sets of their own music, tightly synced with the aid of software, and fiddle with a few knobs here and there, controlling some basic effects. That’s not to say that they are any less talented than the DJs in the videos I posted above, but their talent is applied to hours of studio time working on their music, not playing a technically skilled, or musically intriguing live set. Are these the acts Cowell is looking for? If so, the show would be better received if it were billed as a talent show for music producers, and honestly, doesn’t that sound like such a better idea anyways?

As the show is billed now, and without some serious creativity on Cowell’s part regarding the format of an episode, it will simply be an outlet to push watered down radio-friendly dance music to the masses, with a DJ who spends more time in the tanning booth than the DJ booth.

So instead of getting all grumpy that our culture is being ruined by this abomination of an idea¦stick up for what you love. If you think you bring something creative to the world of DJing, audition for the show. Please, I’m begging you! EDM will need all the help it can get from uniquely talented individuals. If not, this show will be flooded by a bunch of David Guetta wannabes who think DJing is about fist pumping, the infamous Jesus-pose, and that Beats by Dr. Dre are acceptable headphones (they’re not, in case you were wondering).

The explosion of dance music popularity in the United States over the past few years is only going to continue, and mark my words, electronic music will define this decade much the way rap and hip hop defined the 2000’s. In that sense, this show is nothing but a positive for the community. But do we really want the mainstream public’s first taste of EDM to be at the hands of Simon Cowell?

As a closing thought, how freaking cool would it be if DJ Jazzy Jeff was brought in as a judge? With Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith listed as co-producers, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch given Will’s association with Jazzy from even before their Fresh Prince days.

Now that would be a way to get me to tune in! Not to mention finding out who will be the next Willaim Hung of the DJ world.