LOS ANGELES – It has been almost a decade since Zedd, the Grammy - winning producer and DJ, released his sophomore album, “True Colors.” A lot can happen in that time. Mostly, the German dance-pop maverick needed to push himself to make an album that would move the needle — one that told a story beyond the success of his debut LP, “Clarity,” or “True Colors,” which he says was created to prove that he could not be placed into “this EDM box of making 128 BPM club bangers, because I have more to say.”
Enter “Telos,” his long-awaited third full-length.
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“It is an album that for many years I doubted I could create,” he told The Associated Press. “I wanted something timeless, something that I would be proud of forever, and something that is very detailed and where it’s not just songs thrown together onto a record, but where every song leads into the next.”
The project is also highly collaborative, including features from Muse and John Mayer to newer pop voices like Remi Wolf and Bea Miller.
In the interview, ZEDD discusses “Telos,” being inspired by Jeff Buckley and the state of EDM. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: It has been nine years since your last album. Why is that?
ZEDD: I’ve enjoyed not putting pressure on myself, and just releasing singles. And of course, I always — in the back of my mind — I was like, I will make another album. But what am I trying to do, and what am I trying to say? And I came up with these concepts before ever starting (to) work on an album. I wanted it to be meaningful and have some sort of concept behind it, not just, “Hey, I have a contract, I need to make an album.”
Then the pandemic came around and I thought, “Well, this is a perfect time. Now everybody’s off. I can finally sit down and make an album.” And I was aimlessly trying to make this album that just didn’t feel genuine to me, and I scrapped the entire thing besides one song, "Dream Brother," which kind of became a pillar of my album.
AP: “Dream Brother” is a surprise.
ZEDD: The whole inspiration behind “Dream Brother” was this artist, Jeff Buckley, that was so hugely inspiring to me in my life, and that song that was really meaningful to me and that felt like, “Well, this is a concept: making things that are genuinely meaningful to me, that have some sort of connection to my musical education or life.” And I sort of started redoing my album from around “Dream Brother,” And all of a sudden, I felt like, “Oh, there’s a concept there.” And there was this moment when I kind of cracked the code by saying, “This is going to be an album that is purely for me, whatever that means musically."
So that kind of clicked and I realized, “OK, anything that’s coming from the heart is going to be put into this album.” And any emotion that I could kind of grasp, of what inspired me back in the day, I want to try to recreate in whichever way, to let other people feel what I felt back in the day when I was deeply inspired by albums.
AP: You've always wanted to work with Matt Bellamy, and Muse is featured on the closing track, “1685," which references Bach's “The Well Tempered Clavier."
ZEDD: They’re amongst the most influential people ever to me. So, for me to get to work with Matt Bellamy was a dream — and the entire band, really. And we have tried multiple times in the past... we both tried twice with two different songs. And they felt awesome, but not perfect and not forever. So luckily, he’s very similar to me, musically, in the regard that we’re not going to force anything.
I had this vision (for “1685”), and I told my manager, “This one is going to be the instrumental track or with Muse, but with nobody else.” There’s nobody I would consider, because Muse is an artist who works music this way. They oftentimes will take classical pieces and re-interpret them and make it their own. And to me, it was like, “Well, if I’m going to reinterpret my favorite classical piece of all time, I’m only going to do it with somebody who does that as well — and who inspired me to do that to begin with.”
AP: “Telos” com
es from ancient Greek; it can mean “end” or “goal.” What does it mean to you?
ZEDD: “Telos” does have multiple meanings. One of them is accomplishment and reaching your goal, celebrating the human art. And that was what I was feeling for the majority of making the record. I felt like I’ve accomplished something that I didn’t know I could accomplish, creating an album on a level that I wasn’t sure I could still do.
And then towards the tail end of making “Telos,” I started feeling the other emotion, which was just that I exhausted myself so extensively to the point of losing nearly 20 pounds. I couldn’t sleep at night. I would wake up at four in the morning with the song stuck in my head that I was just working on. It was really kind of traumatizing in a sense for me, and I kind of really resonated with the meaning — the end — of “Telos.”
AP: What are your thoughts on the state of EDM? It's a rollercoaster — highs and lows — in terms of popularity.
ZEDD: I have to admit that I’m not even that in the loop on the state of EDM, and I think — I don’t know if it’s subconsciously — but since I started working on my album, to me, I started working on a body of work that to me was completely separate from what the trend of EDM is. I don’t even know how EDM my album really is. It’s half organic, it’s half orchestral, it’s half electronic. And I’m also not really interested in following the trends, and I haven’t been a huge fan of a lot of the trends that are kind of picked up on. And I feel like trends last a shorter period of time than they ever have, so chasing that tail, I feel like will never fulfill you. Because by the time you arrive, there’s already something else that’s trendy.
I kind of just made that decision early on in my career that I’m going to create my own path, and I’m going to walk my path the way I want to and whoever wants to join me is welcome to join me. But I’m not for everybody. And my goal has never been to satisfy everybody’s opinions. And that’s an unachievable goal to begin with. And I think if you’re genuine about what you do, if you love the music you create, then there are going to be people out there who will feel the same way.
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Music Writer Maria Sherman contributed to this report from New York.