199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008     back | search     5: David Guetta STYLE: House/electronic KNOWN FOR: Having a party with the clubbers. TUNE OF 2008: David Guetta with Steve Angello & Sebastian Ingrosso 'Everytime We Touch' (Charisma) PRODUCER OF 2008: Laidback Luke First record you ever bought? The Rolling Stones 'Miss You' Weirdest thing you've seen all year? The Pope saying it's wrong to use condoms when millions of people are dying from AIDS. Top gadget of 2008? Pacemaker. Most important thing you've learned this year? Logic Audio. I was using Ableton before. Making a new album with new software is really exiting.  Music from David Guetta If you've never seen David Guetta play and you want to find out why he's the highest placed house DJ in our poll you could do a lot worse than digging out the live CD he recorded for DJmag at Zurich's Q Club last Christmas. On it you'll hear the way that he slams genres together, his way of layering familiar a capellas over underground tracks and the sheer devotion he whips up with his amazing connection with the crowd. Something to note though - the cheers and singing had to be turned down in the mix. 'I really wanted to have microphones in the room,' David recalls. 'I insisted on it because I wanted the people to feel what was going on. On the CD I actually turned down the screams and the shouting because it was so loud that it was covering the music.' That noise came from 2000 people - we can only imagine the volume when Guetta played to a crowd of two million in Brazil for the Carnival, which, as you might expect, was one of David's highlights of 2008. But it wasn't the size of the crowd that made it so special, more the people in it. 'They're not clubbers,' he explains. 'Some of them have nothing, they just go there and have two days to forget everything and they have the best time of the year. Their life is really hard but for two days they feel like the world is theirs. And it's fantastic to see that.' A very different set-up saw Guetta play to 40,000 hardcore fans at his Unighted party in the Stade De France, where he was joined by Carl Cox and Tiësto. 'It was special,' he says simply. Add in Love Parade, Bahia Carnival, Queensday, Techno Parade and Global Gathering and David has entertained 4.5 million people this summer alone, and that's without counting the 180 club gigs he's played in his 'DJ year'. 'This year, every day I was playing a different set,' he says. 'I was playing so much that I would feel the need to shoot myself if I had to always play the same tracks.' While we're talking statistics, he's now clocked up sales of two million albums and three million singles, has in excess of 50 million hits on Youtube (including the No.1 and No.3 most watched 'electronica' clips on the site) and has seen all four singles from his 'Pop Life' album break the Billboard Dance airplay Top 10. 'Love Is Gone' - his anthem - is currently massive in the US, very unusually for a dance track. Fifth single 'Everytime We Touch', with Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso, is coming soon, even though he's already in the studio recording his new LP. But does all this matter for a man who says that he's a DJ first and the rest is icing? Does he care that he's spent three months at No.1 in the US iTunes dance chart? 'Everything is important,' he says. 'But to be honest, I don't really look at charts. I'm happy to see that it's been successful, but for me I make my music for the DJs and for the clubs and that's how I see if it works or not. When I hear all the other DJs playing my track, when I play the track myself and people are going crazy - that's the most important thing for me.' When we interviewed David after he got off the decks from recording the DJmag covermount CD he told us that he doesn't want to be credible, instead aiming to be incredible. Well, it's certainly been another year when dance music's pop star has done just that. Words: James Kendall