For Van Buuren, one of the best DJs in the world, it wasn’t an idea, but a decision. “I’m resigning. I’ve told my wife and friends too, but I haven’t announced it publicly.”
From 2007 to 2010 and again in 2012, 47-year-old Van Buuren was at the top of the list of the best DJs in the Netherlands. DJ Magazine. The Dutch DJ clearly had no shortage of bookings and felt increasingly alive.
“By that time I’d been to Ibiza sixteen times in the summer and I couldn’t remember a single night at the end of the trip. It was a big blur. That couldn’t have been the intention.”
Huge hit explodes Van Buuren’s world: ‘Everything was impossible’
The Dutch DJ was on the verge of exhaustion. He had played everywhere and already knew in 2012 that things had to turn around. At that time he became a father so he decided to slow down a bit and produce pop songs. We are This is the feeling It was a huge success and the dance spread in the United States.
“I was saying: Damn it, I’ll do what I want. Suddenly, the pop world started embracing me, which also brought with it a kind of discomfort. So I said to my wife: ‘Well, when you’re in us I was born, and I take things easy, and I don’t go away anymore At the end of every week. The opposite happened.”
“It was a long summer of love. There was no way it could end. We all ended up in a strange momentum, which only stopped when Avicii died.”
DJ recognizes himself in Avicii’s description
The death of the Swedish DJ in 2018 alone in a hotel room in Amman opened his eyes. “Nico Dikshorn wrote De Volkskrant He had never seen anyone so alone, surrounded by so many people. I cut that article. It’s still hanging here in the toilet, because I thought: This is about me too. Damn, that’s just me.”
Van Buren then began organizing discussion groups for DJs about mental health. “During Corona, we had Zoom sessions, which you could turn into a TV series afterwards. How special that was, with all the big DJs participating in it. Trance, techno, hardstyle, everything mixed together. We had very open conversations. By all “Something on social media has become fake, and not many kids dare to say, ‘I’m tired,’ or ‘I feel young.'”
“I was very interested in other people’s opinions”
Now he also saw that the star’s presence was eating him up. Van Buren now dared to express himself more publicly. “I noticed that I cared a lot about the opinions of others. More than I cared about what I actually found important. The voices around me became louder than my own. I was always reading all the criticism, and that was a lot.”
Van Buren debuted his ninth studio album with the title on Friday breathes. He said about his new album: “Breathing means more than just inhaling oxygen. It also means appreciating the moment and what is to come.”
It took Van Buuren more than two years to write the songs that can be heard on his new album. His previous album Feeling again It was about finding himself again, during the time he almost stopped being a DJ.
“Unable to type with boxing gloves on. Freelance organizer. Avid analyst. Friendly troublemaker. Bacon junkie.”