“My soul is fading/We got it all wrong
This world managed to teach us how to sing our song
And my soul is fading/But I know what pure grace could be.”
“Fading” – Swimming Paul
I did not expect to hear such deep yearning in a dance track from a popular producer. EDM (electronic dance music) is known for technical production and exuberant beat drops. But lately, the genre brims with existential longing and a desire for transcendence.
Can dance music be more than just escape? Could it also be a place of radical embodiment and prayerful presence? Can Christ speak, through DJs, to the cavernous heart that’s hungry for something greater?
Though it might seem unlikely, EDM allows young people to lay down pretense and come clean about their desires.
Theologian Paul Anleitner describes a shift in our current moment from postmodernism to metamodernism. People are tired of pessimistic ways of seeing the world. They’re exchanging despair for earnest sincerity and swapping cynicism for hope. Our current “metamodern” zeitgeist leans toward a way of seeing that is not starkly materialist; it glimpses the possibility and genuine meaning behind the mundane. Our culture, even unknowingly, is on the hunt for what C.S. Lewis called “the deeper magic.”
Dance music may seem an unlikely place for such existential themes. It’s a genre better known for disembodiment. Those who attend raves, festivals, and EDM shows often imbibe substances they believe will lead to a transcendent experience of the music. Such escapism is synonymous with electronic music. However, escapism isn’t all that the genre has to offer.
When I asked one Christian rave-goer what draws him to EDM, he emphasized the sense of community and freedom. Even in his sobriety, this fan delighted in the sense of communal joy and belonging found in EDM spaces. He felt free to dance, not to escape his body, but to practice presence more fully, moving as participation in the music and connection with the humans around him. Such embodiment is an act of courage in an increasingly fragmented and digitally detached world. To dance, to attune deeply to the crescendos and dips of any music, is a common grace from God.
Furthermore, the lyrics of popular EDM songs are not as shallow and party-centric as you might expect. Strangely enough, the word I’d use to describe many EDM lyrics would be wistful. Many EDM songs, on their surface, are about longing for romantic connection. But even these words echo the God-shaped space in all of us, the eternity reverberating in our hearts that Ecclesiastes describes.
In the night, I need you
In the night, I call for you
In the night, I need you…
I don’t say it loud, but it’s heavy on my chest
All these quiet thoughts won’t ever let me rest…
Though simple, the yearning in BUNT. and Malou’s “i need u” is psalmic. An earlier song by the producer titled “Clouds” (feat. Nate Traveller) even opens with prayer-like words: “You care for me/When no one else is there for me/You provide air for me to breathe/I’ll watch you, restlessly.” Some EDM songs are more explicitly spiritual. Fred Again’s “Clara (the night is dark)” samples “The Storm Is Passing Over,” a hymn originally written in 1905 that insists, “Courage, my soul/And let us journey on/Though the night is dark/It won’t be very long.”
More directly still, an artist called Barry Can’t Swim includes these lyrics in “Deadbeat Gospel”:
Our church is teeming with sinners in need of redeeming
Heathens ready to believe what we believe in
I am a minister of sound…
If God is a DJ, then we pray that he plays deep basses.
Similarly, Paris-based producer Swimming Paul adds introspective lyrics over shimmering beats. It’s almost surreal to imagine crowds chanting, “And if I tell you I was born again” in the club. (EDM is not the only electronic music genre to display such an emotional range. Other genres like hyperpop and rage also vacillate between hope and despair.)
Though it might seem unlikely, EDM allows young people to lay down pretense and come clean about their desires. Not desires for dancing, drugs, or even sex, but rather, a greater yearning for meaning-making and communion. That need for deep fellowship lies at the core of the genre’s subculture.
EDM has always been associated with belonging and connection in my own story. I grew up during the zenith of ‘00s and ‘10s-era EDM. Skrillex soundtracked my early high school angst. A boy showed off his gloving—a light show synced to music using fluorescent lights on the tips of your fingers—at homecoming. The closest I’ve been to feeling like someone’s muse was hearing “you inspired this remix” from another kid producing beats on SoundCloud. “Gold Dust” by DJ Fresh, remixed by Flux Pavilion, was the catalyst for one of my closest friendships. Dubstep and melodic house were a shared language.
Reflecting a distinctly metamodern direction, EDM is a place where nonchalance is shed in favor of earnest expression. Young people are being honest about their most desperate needs. They may not have the answers, but they’re asking the right questions. Here, Augustine’s oft-quoted sentence comes to mind: “You have formed us for yourself, and our hearts are restless ‘til they find rest in you.” EDM chronicles that restlessness, daring to hope that the question of longing might finally be answered with a place to rest.