Zedd is a Grammy-award winning producer and Disc Jockey from Germany. After being discovered by Skrillex in 2011, he was later signed to Interscope Records, producing his debut album, “Clarity,” in 2012. Since then, his fame has risen in large part thanks to the singles “Clarity” and “Stay the Night” from his debut album, along with his latest hit “I Want you to Know” off “True Colors,” which came out this year. Zedd is now on his “True Colors” tour and called in to speak to WSN about how he plans to keep showing his true colors as a musician, and how he hopes his tour will provide fans not only with a show, but with an all-around transformative experience.

WSN: As an artist, you have stated a few times that you would like to bring the ‘M’ back in EDM (electronic dance music). How do you plan on doing just that?

Zedd: I think “True Colors” was a big moment for me because I wanted to let that M shine a little bit more, and the title track has no drop and is a traditional type of song with a chorus and verse and a bridge. And you’ll see that, on this “True Colors” album, some of my songs are electronic and some of them aren’t, but that’s where the barriers are gone and an artist doesn’t feel like they have to have a 30-second intro because they are a DJ or you have to have a drop because people have to jump. For me, that was my step to break the barriers, and tell the world that I just make music that I like, and sometimes it might not always be electronic. If you like that, you should join my path, and if not, there are a lot of other incredible artists that you can listen to.

WSN: Being constantly immersed in the EDM world because of your lifestyle, where do you find originality or inspiration for your tours or your music outside of your everyday or EDM world?

Zedd: Musically speaking, I’m mostly inspired by music that’s slightly older. Stuff like Queen or the Beatles is always really inspiring because back then, you could be a bit more risky with music and people would still understand because people used to spend more time listening to music, whereas now you only have 20 seconds before the first person hits next on the Spotify playlist. But that stuff is still the most inspiring to me. When it comes to my live show, I think I can be inspired by anything really. I’m a very visual person, generally speaking. I’ve combined music over the last year that I’ve never played out just because I knew that I wanted to have a certain type of light and visual and I just wanted to have it in a certain context. So, maybe that’s what makes me stand out a little more — that I play music not based on the music but based on how I make it look live.

WSN: What was your initial vision for your “True Colors” tour?

Zedd: I’ve always been into production, so going into these big arena tours in amphitheaters, I’ve been thinking about the best level of experience for my fans. I decided to work with my favorite artist, Beeple, who makes unbelievable stuff. He’s been working on this for about half a year, which is a long time. We built 4K content for the entire show, and the idea was that every time I change a song, the world changes.  You’ll be in a fiery, hell world, to an ice world. Or for “Clarity,” it’d be a water world. Every time you hear the song, I want you to hear the song and feel every feeling there is through lighting, pyro and all that tools that we have. When I saw the Michael Jackson show in Vegas, I was really inspired by that because it wasn’t just about what you hear but what you see, and the order of all of that, and I was inspired to do something like that.

Zedd will be playing a sold out show at Madison Square Garden this Friday, Oct. 2.

Email Christina Hong at [email protected].