Has there been a DJ - in fact, a musician generally - in the history of music that has made more of a massive success out of factory-producing the same track over and over again than Avicii? Perhaps only Coldplay, whose dour wallpaper cry-a-thon piano ballads actually provide a decent comparison to the output of the highest (lowest?) placed DJ on this list. Avicii is the DJ that you can't avoid. His tracks are absolutely everywhere, so ubiquitous that you inadvertently find yourself humming the chorus of Wake Me Up over and over again in your sleep. In principle, Wake Me Up, which showcases Avicii's trademark "fusion" of country blues and generic trance-y EDM pretty comprehensively, should be quite interesting. The vocals are great, the chorus is catchy, and the use of a husky country/soul voice is actually pretty new to club music. But those HORRIBLE vampy keyboards that flutter through the track are such a staple of the sets of pretty much everyone in this list that Avicii simply aids in perpetuating the ever-increasing trend towards gentrified, stale EDM music. Once that sound became popular, it was inevitable that every set by every attention-seeking DJ would include tracks of the same style. The reason why these DJs are so poor is their constant need to pander to a mainstream audience. Rather than seeking out rare or exciting records like their underground contemporaries and their influential predecessors, they instead produce the same tracks over and over, creating hour-long sets that rely on laser shows, ridiculous sub-bass and MDMA-friendly synth sounds to keep their audience of festival-goers happy. Here's hoping that the EDM bubble bursts sooner rather than later, and DJing returns to being the stunning curatorial art form that it should be. In the meantime, all that can be done is to support the small club subcultures around the world that continue to push boundaries, such as Lisbon's kuduro, South Africa's kwaito, London's grime, Berlin's Janus crew, Jersey and Baltimore club, New York's vogue scene, the footwork of Chicago...
