The hill I will die on: ‘Being a DJ’ isn’t a proper job | Phil Mongredien

In what other field is a couple of hours’ work taking the credit for somebody else’s brilliance so venerated? Who earns the easiest money in showbiz? And when I say “earns”, what I actually mean is “gets paid”. If David Guetta and Calvin Harris can make up to $1m for a festival-headlining set – a couple of hours’ work – there can only be one answer: DJs. Because boil it down and all they’re doing for such vast sums of money is quite competently playing music that somebody else actually created. They are proficient labourers rather than artists. In what other field is taking the credit for somebody else’s brilliance so venerated? Ah, but they get people dancing, you say. Yet how difficult is it to get people to dance when they have come out with the specific intention of dancing, and a reasonable proportion of them are on another planet? These people have invested heavily in having a good time, so it invariably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given the sheer number of floor-filling tunes made during the past six or seven decades, it’s hardly a great feat to choose a few that other people will tolerate or even like. Phil Mongredien is joint production editor for Guardian Opinion and Long Reads Continue reading...

By Phil Mongredien