Globally renowned production duo, Showtek, have just dropped their brand-new remix of Major Lazor’s, Can’t Take it from Me.
The new release is a feel-good summer track featuring singer-songwriter, Skip Marley, which has come just in time for all the festivals we still have yet to come, and Showtek’s global tour.
Showtek – also known by their names, Sjoerd and Wouter Janssen, are award-winning brothers, continuing their rise in the charts.
The pair have worked with worldwide phenomenons including David Guetta, Tiesto, and even made a pop crossover to produce Chris Brown’s 2013 track, Nobody’s Perfect
Can’t Take it from Me, is the follow-up track to their ultimate main-stage worthy, festival banger with Steve Aoki and MakJ, Rave, featuring Kris Kiss on vocals.
With performances at renowned festivals including Electroland, Dreamfields Festival, Parookaville, Mysteryland and many more, we can only anticipate the party!
So, not only do Showtek tour together, write together, spend quality time with each other and family, they both also recently got engaged to their partners!
We caught up with the pair to chat about their new track, working with Steve Aoki and MakJ, and their top three artists they hope to collaborate with in the future!
Hey Showtek! Tell us about your brand new Major Lazer remix, Can’t Take it From Me.
We have always been kind of fans of Major Lazer; they have their unique sound and they are a stand-alone brand. Their style of music goes very well with what we are known for, and blends very well together. As Showtek, we have worked together before on our single, Believer, back in 2017, so we took the opportunity to work again when they asked us to do a remix. It’s a fun song and the vocals of Skip Marley are really different and cool. We kind of wanted to keep the original vibe of the song but add a festival feel to it. The song goes off when we play it and we are really happy with the result; it’s perfect for the summer.
You recently worked with Steve Aoki and MAKJ for, Rave. How did that collaboration come about?
We have to take you back to early 2018, when we finished this version with the vocals of, Fight for Your Right, from Beastie Boys. Unfortunately, we couldn’t use these because of copyrights reasons, so after playing this version, we had to get a new vocal. Steve wanted to work with Kris Kiss on this one and it worked out very well! The song has a big SHOWTEK melody and it’s something that some of our fans wanted to hear again. It’s not the first time that we work with MakJ, we did a track together on our Label Skink called, GO! We have never collaborated with Steve but we released our single, Slow Down, on DimMak (Steve’s Label) back in 2013, which is still one of DimMak’s best-selling tunes of all time. We always wanted to work with Steve but we never really found the right moment, so after knowing each other for more than 6 years, we finally got together for RAVE! We decided to release it before the summer since it’s such a big tune to play at Festivals.
What is it like to win awards such as Best European DJ and Producer?
It’s always nice to be recognized for the work you do. There is a lot of different ways to find recognition but receiving an award is always cool and it definitely works for motivating us to keep on doing what we have been doing. For us, success means that we can do what we do; Travel the world, play for our fans, make them happy and making a living out of it.
Your collaboration with David Guetta, Bad, absolutely smashed it. Did you expect the reaction it received?
We never thought that, BAD, would become one of the biggest EDM tunes ever. Still to this day, it’s such a huge song; we have over a billion streams and views and that’s something we never expected. It also shows that sometimes it’s a combination of timing, quality and little bit of good karma, ha! After this collab with Guetta, we worked on many other songs with him and we became good friends as well, so it’s very nice to see what this song has done for our career, but also for our personal lives.
How is performing at major festivals going? What are the crowds like?
It’s of course amazing to play for thousands of people. Last weekend we played at Parookaville in Germany and we played for more than 60,000 people. It’s almost impossible to describe in words, since it’s a feeling from the moment you walk on stage! We are just very blessed that we are able to do this and we get to do this so many times a year. When a big crowd is really energetic, it feels like you never wanna go off stage. It gives you so much adrenaline, it’s almost a drug! Which leads to the second thing that comes with performing for big crowds or maybe crowds in general. It gives you such a boost that you can get addicted to it; to the energy, the attention, it’s something different. So, the feeling when you’re home alone on your couch, or when you are in a place where nobody can see you or nobody recognises you, you need to be able to just be you and be normal and be comfortable with that. It’s something artists need to learn how to deal with, because that feeling when you are on stage is amazing, but it’s a high so it can’t become a standard in your life, otherwise it will become your low. So, it’s important to find a balance and to realise that you as an artist on stage, is not you as a person in this world. It’s almost like an alter ego of yourself, but you need to be able to step away from it too.
Where do you guys love performing most?
It’s a question that can’t be answered because there are just too many good places! We have fans all around the world and it’s just amazing to see that people love our music and that we mean something to them! Sometimes it’s festivals, sometimes it’s an intimate crowd or sometimes it’s not even a show that makes us realise that what are doing makes people happy. We have a fan, who unfortunately got cancer and our music got him through the rough times. It’s amazing what music can do or mean to somebody. So, to answer that question, it might be the hearts of our fans.
If you could pick three artists/producers to collaborate with, who would it be?
Coldplay – We have been fans of their music for a long time and there is just something about it. We were watching their concert in Sao Paolo, and what their music does to people is just another level. The band has such insane energy onstage and the songs are so catchy.
Kanye West – Just always loved his music, his lyrics. It’s rough, it’s edgy and his tour with Jay-Z was of the best concerts we’ve ever seen.
Bassie & Adriaan – The best clowns in the world, HA!!!!
Being brothers, is it harder to spend all your time together as a duo?
It’s more fun! We know each other like no other so we can speak without words. We also know each other’s qualities and know how to give each other space. It’s amazing that we can spend time together as family, make music and travel the world. And if we feel like we don’t want to talk to each other or don’t want to see each other, we can without being bothered by it. We also travel with our TM who is our childhood friend, so on tour we have so much fun together.
Finally, 2020 is approaching. What can fans expect? Do you guys have any goals to hit?
On a personal level, we always try to find time for quality time with family and friends and it’s something that we need to keep doing because it’s so valuable. We also try to stay in shape, be healthy and keep up the healthy lifestyle. Sjoerd is 95% Vegan and tries to keep that lifestyle since it’s very healthy; even though it’s not always easy while we travel. Wouter tries to do the same but eats fish because he just loves his salmon, haha! We workout multiple times a week since this is also beneficial to be creative in the studio. We both engaged this year so that’s something big in our personal life!!
Musically, we have so much in the pipeline. It’s insane how many cool new tracks we have ready to release in 2019. That basically means that 2020 will be a year where you can hear a lot of new Showtek music, which will be very diverse. For all the EDM lovers we have a lot of collabs which we are working on at the minute: Aoki/Gammer/Guetta/Afrojack and many, many more. This year we signed a contract with Universal Music Group, and with them we are working on a few crossover songs. Maybe not the typical ‘bigroom Showtek’ sound, but these songs show that we are more than dance music producers. As an artist, you want to be able to express your artistic freedom and not every song fits in a 128 BPM spectrum. We are super excited to show our fans what we have been working on!!
You can keep up with the pair over on their Instagram page here!