POPOF: “I Could not Care Less About Trends”
What does it take for a house and techno artist to get signed to trendy labels like Hot Creations, Mood Records, and Truesoul? If a remark by rising Parisian DJ and producer POPOF is any indication, it’s to resist pressure to conform to trends in the first place.
POPOF is approaching 20 years in dance music. In that period, he’s figured out what it takes to gain traction as an artist. Some of his best-performing tracks take cues from the floor-filling style of techno championed by labels like Form and Filth on Acid. Fortunately for him, it’s a sound that never seems to go out of style.
By comparison, flavor-of-the-week dance music fads have little bearing on his creative output. He said as much in an interview with Xceed as the live event industry began to turn back on in 2021.
When asked what he thought about the recent rave influence in techno, POPOF said, “I think it is perhaps tied to a global ’90s revival trend. Today’s kids never had the chance to witness the early days of rave music and are therefore discovering/rediscovering the music from back then.”
“Honestly, I think it is very cool, but I could not care less about trends,” he went on. “I like making music according to my mood of the moment, what I have been experiencing, not according to what’s trendy.”
POPOF is by no means the first successful artist to arrive at this conclusion. In his Gray Area Spotlight interview, Darius Syrossian advised against trying to please the masses on the grounds that “80% go because they think it’s the thing to do” and “when they’ve had their three or four years of going clubbing, then they’re gonna have kids or whatever.”
The fact that career electronic musicians share POPOF’s sentiments certainly lends credence to his words. It sends a clear message: be yourself and carve out a lane that fits your creative vision.
