It is only fitting that Throwback Thursday’s come out of semi retirement (3 week break) to discuss the somewhat random and early retirement of arguably the most recognizable and most polarizing EDM groups comprising of Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Steve Angello. These three young men from Sweden decided to join forces towards the end of 2008 and formed the supergroup known as Swedish House Mafia. In only a short amount of time did this group take the music industry by storm with club bangers accompanied with sing-along vocals which boosted the careers of many up and coming vocalists. It is only fitting that their last performance as a group came at Ultra Music Festival (UMF) in Miami, Florida after the past 2 years they hosted their own rave festivals called Masquerade Motel in a separate venue in downtown Miami to compete with Ultra after there was clear tension and disparity between UMF and SHM about a myriad of topics when it came to negotiations.
As it was stated before, Swedish House Mafia is one of the more polarizing groups in the industry as they had one group of people that absolutely loves every little beat and tweet produced by them and another group of people that hates them because of their abilities to sell out venues with capacities of tens of thousands of people faster than anything in the history of music. The massive following of people loved them and tattooed quotes and pictures of them because they truly believed in everything SHM stood for while other people believed they were corporate sellouts who made money off of young little ravers who didn’t care about what anybody else in the industry offered because they were so amused with the “fad” of SHM. Basically, both groups of people had total opposite viewpoints of the same exact thing, and if one takes an objective view of both sides of the argument, it is very easy to understand where they are coming from.
There are a good amount of Swedish House Mafia fans that are just your average EDM listeners who don’t know that you pronounce Deadmau5 as “deadmouse.” These fans fall in love with the vocals in Sweidhs House Mafia songs like “Save The World” and “Don’t You Worry Child” which are played on American radio stations which is very rare in the EDM community which is exactly one of the reasons why some people hate SHM. It is the fact that SHM has made EDM playable on radio stations that makes them “sellouts” in the eyes of many of their haters. The haters also believe that SHM found a musical style that would make them money and sell out shows in record time so they just produced a handful of songs that sounds similar but have different vocals sung by different people. It is that musical style though that attracted so many of the people that are in love with everything that has to do with the Swedish superstars. Arguably the best thing done by SHM was the fact that they boosted the careers of many young and up coming talents who might not have gotten the opportunities if it wasn’t for them. Whenever SHM decided to host a show, they would need to bring a couple of opening acts with them to the sellout show like An21 and Max Vangelli,Calvin Harris, Madeon, and Alesso, who all have gone on to have successful careers by themselves.
This article features one mashup, one remix, and one original: Fire in Your New Shoes vs. One (Kaskade Mashup,), Antidote (Tommy Trash remix), and Miami 2 Ibiza.
Fire in Your New Shoes vs. One (Kaskade Mashup) -
The first song in this article is a mashup between two absolute superstars in this industry, Kaskade and Swedish House Mafia. The vocals in this song are taken from the song called “Fire in your New Shoes” which is sung by Dragonette and came out on the Kaskade album called Dynasty. The beat used in this mashup was arguably the biggest and most used song for the calendar year of 2010 when it was first released by the relatively new group by the name of Swedish House Mafia and the name of the song was obviously One. This is one of The Bangin Beats favorite mashups and is an absolute must listen if you have not heard it yet.
Antidote (Tommy Trash Remix) –
Every TBT consists of original tracks but also a mashup and a remix. The remix in this article is by Tommy Trash who does an excellent job remixing this collaboration between Swedish House Mafia and Knife Party. Different artists have different styles when they produce music, and it is very obvious when hearing this song where Knife Party leaves their mark and where SHM leaves theres. Knife Party is very important in influencing the drop of the original with their heavy and distinct bass that is also featured in all of their productions. The drop of the song that is influenced by Knife Party contrasts to Swedish House Mafia and their electro-club-house beats which is heard throughout this track. Tommy Trash leaves his own distinct mark by completely changing the drop of the song by producing his own style of hard electro but he leaves the vocals intact so the listener can tell that this is a Swedish House Mafia song.
Miami 2 Ibiza –
This is a true throwback and the only original song featured in this article. Like every other Swedish House Mafia song, vocals are included, this time it is more of a rap-based vocal production by Tinie Tempah and is only fitting to be the last song of the article since their last ever performance was in Miami so just flip the title and call it Ibiza 2 Miami.