Since his third album, Pop Life, released in 2007, and his F*** Me I’m Famous compilations (seven to date), David Guetta has proved hard to ignore. Whether it’s on the radio, music TV stations or the pages of celebrity mags, he’s just about everywhere. What’s more, Guetta has achieved a rare level of international success for a French DJ and musician, with 5 million albums and 17 million singles sold throughout his career so far.

Titanium David Guetta Nothing but the beat (EMI) 2011 Listen

His fifth album, Nothing but the beat, is unlikely to stop his winning streak. Just like his previous offerings, Pop Life and One Love, David Guetta has shown that he knows how to get the musicians onboard. The guest list reads like an American chart of rap and R‘n’B best sellers, with names like Lil Wayne, Timbaland, Akon, Snoop Dogg, Will.I.Am and Usher, totalling no less than 16 guests for the 12 tracks on the album’s first disk. What would David Guetta do without friends in high places? Or perhaps it’s the other way round.

Since his successful collaboration with The Black Eyed Peas, the French DJ has been in demand at hip-hop stars’ studios. The result is some new titles that are hard to classify, where electronic sounds mix with R‘n’B vocals filtered through Auto-Tune, the software programme made popular by T-Pain and Kanye West, which has the effect of giving everyone the same robot voice.

Techno songs

Vocals, singers and chorus lines take pride of place in Guetta’s music, and it’s the blend of simple songs with catchy rhythms, R‘n’B, dance vocals and hardcore electronic sounds that are the key to his success. The tracks go down as easily on the radio as they do at the disco, and please young R‘n’B fans and rap lovers alike, and even their mums and dads. His electronic sounds are increasingly contaminating American hip-hop, churning out music without any real personality or clear roots. But maybe Guetta is simply popularizing a certain (commercial) idea of electro – and avoiding taking any risks in the process.

Guetta left the underground scene a long time ago, but the second, instrumental disk, Electronic Album moves in that direction. It starts off promisingly with a sound like a piano on a cracked vinyl record, before electronics and souped-up guitars take over.  

David Guetta Website

Tracks like The Alphabeat, Lunar, Metro Music and Glasgow owe a lot to Daft Punk and Justice. The Future is an escalation of soaring, pausing throbs. Dreams hesitates between 90s synthesizers (think Quadrophonia or T99 who were already mixing rap and techno) and a sinewy sound not unlike 2 Many DJs.

In Nothing but the beat, the dance floor recipe reaches its apex, with a steamroller of techno rhythms and infernal breaks and rises, punctuated by the odd “Hey!” to let us know we need to lift our arms in the air, or sounds straight out of 90s Eurodance (Gala, Dr Alban, Felix)… or underground techno. This kind of musical syncretism is likely to win over a huge crowd. At 43, David Guetta clearly hasn’t stopped dancing his nights away.

David Guetta Nothing but the beat 2 CD (What a music Ltd/EMI Music France) 2011.

Translation: Anne-Marie Harper