There are looks of confusion all around Madison Square Garden.
It's a bitterly cold February night, and an impressively diverse crowd has packed the arena to see the Black Eyed Peas. But before the group takes the stage for two hours of singing, shiny-outfit wearing and product placement, a DJ booth rises from the floor, manned by a cheerful, bouncy, floppy-haired Frenchman. While the audience is initially befuddled, the second the music starts, recognition lights up their faces, and they begin to dance, for the manically jumping man behind the booth is David Guetta, the DJ responsible for some of the biggest hits on pop radio.
After his short set, Guetta returns to close the show with the Peas, standing behind turntables for their biggest hit, "I Gotta Feeling," which he produced and co-wrote. The track topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks in the summer of 2009 and is still in the top 20 months later. It has sold more than 5 million downloads and has appeared in ads for Target and the Winter Olympics, as well being adopted as the official song of the Portuguese national soccer team.
But even as the crowd was filing out of MSG, Guetta's good, good night was just beginning. A few hours later, he arrived to a packed house at midtown club Pasha and proceeded to man the DJ booth until the break of dawn. As the crowd surged on the floor below him and models packed the VIP booths, Guetta welcomed members of the Peas at various points, with Will.i.am rapping for several hours.
"It was an exciting night, because I got to spend the first part playing these futuristic, crazy, electronic hip-hop beats that I'm making right now," says Guetta, 42. "But then I said to Will, 'It's time for you to go so I can play for my clubbers.' "
While dance music has periodically conquered the American pop charts, its current incursion may be its deepest since the disco heyday of the '70s. From the Peas to Lady Gaga to Jason Derulo to Iyaz to this week's Hot 100 chart-topper Taio Cruz, four-on-the-floor club beats typically the provenance of European discotheques and the Billboard dance charts are suddenly ubiquitous on top 40 radio, and producers such as Guetta, J.R. Rotem and RedOne are in huge demand. It's not only pop acts that are revving up the RPMs: From Kanye West to Flo Rida, hip-hop sounds more like disco nowadays than at any point since "Rapper's Delight." Kelis is emblematic of the shift: She went from collaborating with hip-hop mega-producers the Neptunes on her 2003 hit "Milkshake" to working with Guetta on "Acapella," the first single from her forthcoming album. "Acapella" is No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs chart.
Will.i.am spotted the trend early. "I was wanting to do more dance stuff because I'd been around the world and saw how relevant dance music is everywhere else," he says. "Americans, they don't travel. You go anywhere else and all you hear are dance beats."
Club singles-with their distinctive thump and sometimes indistinctive performers-have always had a place and an audience-it drives radio stations like WKTU New York ("the Beat of New York") and keeps numerous nightclubs in business. But now the beat-bots behind the tracks are being recognized as personalities and talents. Guetta has a new track with Madonna and Lil Wayne lined up and is talking with Euro-beat vanguardist Britney Spears about working together. American audiences are becoming so comfortable with club beats and the idea that DJ'ing is a legitimate way to make a living, no one blinked when Pauly D of "Jersey Shore" fame claimed it as his occupation.
"The last decade was the toughest in a generation and economically devastating. People are ready to have some fun, and dance music lightens things up a bit," says Julie Pilat, associate PD/music director of top 40 KIIS Los Angles. "Guetta's success is part of a larger trend, but I think it's a trend bigger than dance music. Music fans are becoming more sophisticated thanks to the Internet and social networks. Maybe 10-15 years ago everyone would just know a pop star had a new song. Now when songs are released there's an 'MTV News' story about who wrote the song, who produced it and what the record label president was thinking when they signed her.
"The behind-the-scenes people are getting a name," she continues. "When Timbaland dropped 'Shock Value' with songs from different artists, it was a foreign concept. But I think you'll see more and more of that in the coming years.
The day after his Pasha set, Guetta shows no signs of exhaustion as he sits in the back of an SUV, racing to catch a flight to Australia before another blizzard batters the East Coast. Staring out the window at the wet flakes coating Brooklyn, he tries to explain why, after years of fame and success around the world, he's finally having a moment in the United States. Or, rather, why everyone thinks he's finally having his moment.
"Let me tell you a story," Guetta says in his soft French accent. "I was working on some production in Los Angeles, and my record company was there, and they were telling me, 'David, this is America. You should not expect your album to do what you are doing outside, because the DJ culture is not big here.' "
He pauses for effect, then continues. "So I said, 'Can I invite you all to a show?' And I took them to a show I was playing that night, and there were 110,000 people there. I was like, 'You still think there is no DJ culture in America?' "
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