Ep. 229: Zedd | Inside the Mind Behind a Decade of Anthems

And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan

And The Writer Is

Unknown, Music Interviews, Songwriting, Music, Songwriters, Education, Interviews, Music Creation, Artists

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today's guest went from making songs on a floppy-disk keyboard, sampling off a Kellogg’s cereal box DAW, and sending blind MySpace messages… to producing the some of the biggest crossover dance anthems of the last decade. And The Writer Is... Zedd!

What makes this conversation special isn’t just the hits — it’s how brutally honest he is about the craft, the obsession, and the unexpected moments that built his career.

A special thank you to our sponsors...

Our lead sponsor, NMPA aka the National Music Publisher's Association.

Your support means the world to us!

And @splice -- the best sample library on the market, period.

Chapters:

0:00:00 – Teaser

0:01:06 – Welcome & Episode Intro

35:58 – Zedd on Never Thinking He’d Be Successful

25:41 – Growing Up Poor & Studying One Album a Month

18:01 – The Kellogg’s DAW That Started Everything

15:33 – Learning Music on a 16-Track Floppy-Disk Keyboard

30:44 – Why He Thought EDM Was a Joke at First

38:12 – The Skrillex MySpace Story That Changed His Life

31:25 – Finding His Sound Through Curiosity & Obsession

47:14 – The “Lightning Moment” Behind Clarity

59:34 – Being Wrong More Often Than Right

1:03:03 – Why Most Music Feels the Same Today

1:03:37 – Extraordinary vs. Average: What Listeners Actually Feel

1:00:08 – “All I’m Doing Is Chasing a Feeling”

56:26 – The Chaos Behind Making The Middle

1:00:47 – Realizing the Scale of His Own Success

28:23 – What It Takes to Stay Inspired

6:48 – The Creative Principles He Still Lives By

41:22 – The Fastest Way for Artists to Get Noticed

1:05:23 – Zedd’s Final Advice for Musicians

1:07:19 – Closing Thoughts

Hosted by Ross Golan

Produced by Joe London and Jad Saad

Watercolor by Michael White

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I never thought that I would be successful. I never thought it would ever matter.
0:03.5	I'm wrong way more often than I'm right. To me, it's still one of the best ways to get noticed, the quickest and easiest way.
0:10.5	Let's go back to the beginning of your story a bit.
0:14.6	I grew up pretty poor.
0:16.1	Kellogg's came with a music DA. It was a CD inside of a box of cornflakes.
0:21.5	Amazing. And that was the first time I was able to record things. It was like this
0:25.4	lightning came out of my head and it was like, oh my God, this is it. If you were to give
0:30.3	advice to musicians watching you now, be as fast as you can between having some light bulb
0:37.3	in your brain turn on of like, oh, this could be cool to being able to audition that.
0:41.3	To me, it's still one of the best ways to get noticed, the quickest and easiest way.
0:46.0	You take a song everyone loves, you make a remix out of it, you give another reason for people to love that song and love you at the same time.
0:57.6	This is... to love that song and love you at the same time. This season is presented by NMPA, the National Music Publishers Association,
1:03.3	champions of songwriters and publishers everywhere.
1:06.6	Welcome to And The Writer is.
1:08.4	I am your host, Ross Golan.
1:10.5	Today's electronic music maestro has topped all of the charts.
1:15.3	This classically trained pianist traded concert halls for festival stages and somewhere along the way produce hits that defined a decade.
1:24.4	From clarity to stay the nigh to the middle, he mastered the science of making us cry on
1:31.2	the dance floor. He's won Grammy, stacked billions of streams, and somehow still finds time to
1:37.0	argue about sound design on Twitter. All the way from all over the world, this DJ has landed
1:43.1	in the seat across from me and the writer is
1:45.6	Z. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. Thank you for having me. Um, donut shops and coffee. Let's get
	...

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