Dada Life Tickles Our Brain With Provocative Ghost-Producing Discussion

Dada Life are best known for their Born to Rage habits that include their crazy champagne and banana stage antics. What Dada Life should be equally known for however is their incredible combined talents at producing. Recently Olle took to Facebook to discuss ghost-producing with the fans and the resulting conversation was incredibly informative and provocative.

Since the #DISCUSSIONSWITHDADA was so off center from the usual Dada Facebook behavior, some were initially wondering if it was really them behind the screen or if perhaps someone had been hired on for the task of facilitating and moderating the discussion. Fortunately we were quickly assured that there really was a member of Dada voicing their opinion rather than someone who had been hired to be a mouthpiece.

There were quite a few main themes that came out in the discussion, the biggest ones being that Dada Life believe individuals should get credit for what they produce and that studio time should be valued just as much as being on stage. With that being said, there were the usual hints of secrecy and shenanigans that we can expect from the boys.

Olle was coy about who they’ve ghost-produced for and when, hinting at the most important of the Rules of Dada, “never trust us”. A fan called out that they’re in credits for Tiesto songs, yet Olle still did not confirm or deny it.

Given that Stefan and Olle ARE in the credits of a few Tiesto songs, where do you draw the line on what counts as ghost-producing? Is it if the producers aren’t featured in the track name? Is it when you’re producing under a pseudonym? These are questions that weren’t fully answered in the discussion but come up quite often in the Twitter and Facebook feeds of those artists who do produce their own music. Joel Zimmerman (known to most as world-famous internet troll deadmau5) chimed in with a few witty retorts of his own, lending more shenanigans to the discussion.

Dada have very strong opinions that if it’s worthwhile to do, it’s worth putting your own name behind even if you have no desire to get on stage. We are completely on board with this, as there are hours and hours spent behind the scenes in the studio that many people in the crowd are completely unaware of. We don’t want to pick on anyone, but there is no shortage of DJs out right now who play things that others have produced for them. With that being said, a few of us on the team produce and play our own music and can speak to the pure joy that is seeing a crowd go crazy to something we put our blood, sweat, and tears into. For us at least, the satisfaction would be incredibly diminished knowing that nobody would know it was our baby.

 Finally, and most importantly, like many other artists, part of why Dada Life is so successful is due to their amazing collaborative process as a duo. Olle spoke to the importance of having Stefan work with him to tell him when the track is done and bounce ideas off of each other. This synergy is infectious both in the tracks they produce and in their stage presence. Dada just wouldn’t be the same with only one artist, which is partly why we are so eagerly awaiting the news that Stefan is better and back in full Born to Rage Dada form.

We’ve gone on enough about this discussion: What are your thoughts on it? Do you think ghost-producing is worthwhile? Are those who use ghost-producers really artists? Something else tickle your brain? Let us know, we’d love to keep the discussion going!