And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan Ep. 229: Zedd | Inside the Mind Behind a Decade of Anthems
Nov 24, 2025
Zedd, an electronic music producer, is known for his chart-topping hits like "Clarity" and "The Middle." In this engaging conversation, he shares his journey from using a floppy-disk keyboard and a cereal box DAW to creating anthems. Zedd highlights his coffee obsession, the chaos of making music, and unexpected breakthroughs, including a pivotal MySpace encounter with Skrillex. He candidly discusses the challenges of staying inspired, his collaborative work with artists like Hayley Williams and Maren Morris, and his passion for chasing the right emotional feel in his songs.
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Episode notes
Keep An Organizer To Preserve Chaos
- Back up and label your sessions; rely on a consistent engineer if you're messy.
- Fast creative chaos works only if someone organizes and preserves your files for future use.
Album Listening Built Musical Taste
- Listening deeply to full albums used to be a formative exercise because people paid to own one album a month.
- Zedd misses that focused discovery practice and believes it's lost in today's streaming era.
Learning EDM Through Challenges And Experiments
- Zedd made an EDM song as a joke during an eight-hour poker tournament and then built an album by making many quick tracks.
- Sample packs and focused experiments (like automation-only tracks) accelerated his learning curve.
