Rolling Stone Italy celebrated its 10th anniversary with the release of a commercial that caused a stir in the dance music realm, adding fuel to the ‘Is EDM real music?’ debate. Although the creative visuals are remarkable, one of the main ideas of the ‘Rocker vs. DJ’ video is how the use of drugs has brought down the world of EDM. The video portrays the culture of dance music as a satanic neon hell-hole. Here is what the video says:
What the hell are you doing? Electronic noises you try and pass off as music.
Is this your drug now? This is what gives you a buzz when you’re up at the mixer, right?
DJs: criminals with a license to shoot shit into our ear drums. Low quality MP3 pushers.
Third class whores that give it away to the first bidder.
You feel like super stars, huh? The owners of our night time. Heroes of the stage.
No audience will ever chant your name, will never know your songs by heart, because you are an anonymity.
The day will come when your vocals explode and your CDs catch fire.
Boom. In their place, we’ll see a return to guitar, bass and drums. Bringing real music back to life.
The music with searing voices that touch your soul. Once again, it’s the music that rebuilds. It’s the anathema of rock n roll.
While Rolling Stone are all “Rock n blummin’ Roll baby!” the others are calling their audacity outright hypocrisy. And rightly so. The Italian arm might beg to differ, but the parent company’s content seems to have a preference for EDM and so do the covers of many editions. We are inclined to agree that some of the conventional electronic music has started to sound the same, but the fact that the spectrum of genres an artist can cover in the umbrella genre is widening is indisputable.