Martin Garrix

About

Few DJs have risen faster than Martin Garrix. In 2013, when he was just 16, the Dutch dance-music fan (born Martijn Garritsen in May 1996) paid for his ticket to Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, along with 330,000 other attendees; the following year, he performed there—and also at Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival, and Tomorrowland. The catalyst was his breakout hit, “Animals,” an electro-house anthem that sent shockwaves through EDM, setting the tone for several years’ worth of big-room bangers. (It also got the attention of Justin Bieber manager Scooter Braun, who scooped up the teenaged producer for his roster.) By the time Garrix was 20, <I>DJ Magazine</I> named him the world’s No. 1 DJ. Since then, he has straddled dance cred and pop crossover, collaborating with fellow DJs Dillon Francis, Hardwell, and Tiësto (Garrix's mentor and early champion) as well as Usher, Ed Sheeran, and Dua Lipa. He’s come a long way from the savagery of “Animals”: One of his signature moves, in songs like “In the Name of Love,” with Bebe Rexha, or “Ocean,” with Khalid, is something like the EDM equivalent of the power ballad: taking a silky, sensitive mood and building up the synths and drums until they sound all but indestructible.