Image of Skrillex from: http://roberttulchin.com/skrillex

Born: January 15, 1988, in Los Angeles, California

Personal Success Definition

I define success as someone who works as hard as they can to meet their goal, they want to accomplish something so bad that they will work as hard as they can just to make it happen. Skrillex started from almost nothing, he was making music on a laptop with broken speakers, one of those songs he made on that laptop ended up becoming one of the greatest songs of EDM of all time. That song ‘Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites’ won 2 Grammys. From there he started building a brand, and a record label.

Skills for Success

1) They need to master how to brand, 2) They need to make something different,  and 3) They need to put themselves out there. Skrillex is a genius when it comes to his brand, he has a signature sound, look, and overall aesthetic. Skrillex did something that very few producers do these days, he actually sound-designed something incredible. He is known for those crazy sounding monster growls that help defines his brand, his song ‘Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites’ is a perfect example of this. This song has a melodic feel of Nice Sprites, and then some crazy monster growls of Scary Monsters. Skrillex knew what he wanted his brand to be from the beginning, he knew that he had to take risks. Producers these days NEED to take risks, they need to just put their music out there. Skrillex didn’t just put his music out there, but himself and a whole persona as a brand.

How They Used These Skills

Everything these days is about the brand and not the music unfortunately, it’s very rare when you have both something new and different from a good branding aspect. Skrillex did both. You might look at him and think okay, crazy haircut with an emo look, crazy dubstep monster growls, it all fits. This wasn’t by accident, when you go back and look at heavy metal bands and see their crazy haircuts and look, it’s all a brand. They don’t just always look like that, it’s meant to look like that. When Skrillex went on tour, he went on a tour called ‘The Mothership Tour’ and performed in a space ship because at the time his brand was all about aliens, hmm why aliens? because at the time of this tour he released an album called ‘Recess’, and guess what, the whole album was about aliens and space. Everything was planned, nobody really ever thinks about it, but everything is planned and carefully calculated with artists. Skrillex used his branding skills from his music which sounded how he ‘looked’ you could say.

Skrillex performing ‘The Mothership Tour’ in a spaceship in 2011/2014

Source: https://www.youredm.com/

Challenges Overcome

In the beginning, it was a real struggle. Imagine not just creating music but being told that your not even a musician creating music, your just pressing some buttons on a keyboard. Even when he won the Grammys there were people yelling at him calling him ‘button pusher’, Skrillex didn’t just create music, he created a whole new genre and brought it mainstream. If you were to time travel back to 2012, almost every article out there was about how ‘Skrillex’ isn’t creating real music. I myself is also a music producer, I’m using the same software as him, and trust me, you don’t just push some buttons. At the time no record labels really wanted anything to do with electronic music, and didn’t want to be a part of that. Skrillex knew himself that until things changed, he was going to have to take matters into his own hands, that’s when he created his record label ‘OWSLA’. Owsla was created for all types of musicians, of course electronic musicians being most popular on the label. Now things have changed a lot since then, and now people and labels respect electronic producers and know that they are creating music.

This is a photo of Skrillex’s record label OWSLA

Source: http://owsla.com/

Significant Work

This song ‘Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites’ is the song that changed Sonny’s career and a lot of people’s perception of music. This song pioneered a lot of music you hear today and inspired a lot of people (including me) to create something new. Could you imagine back in 2010 when this was released how people reacted? I for instance grew up listening to classical music and songs from the 80’s and 90’s, then I hear this. I was BLOWN away at how something like this could even be created?

Overall Sonny Moore no matter how you look at it has changed the music industry forever, he took chances and risks. I have been listening to Skrillex since I first heard him back in 2015, ever since then I have been always trying to listen to new music as much as I can. Soon Skrillex will be releasing an album, its been 6 years since he’s released a full independent album and I’ll definitely be looking forward to it. If you would like to listen to a song he released a couple days ago as a ‘teaser’ for the new album here it is.

Resources

http://owsla.com/artist/skrillex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrillex

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOfficialSkrillex