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DJ Mag Top100 DJs
17
Alan Walker
38

If 2016 was the year 20-year-old Alan Walker truly exploded into the EDM premiere league, 2017 has been the year he’s truly settled into his role as a next-gen ambassador. After being plunged into the deep-end (he was playing Ultra and supporting Rihanna within months of making his live debut), the be-hooded/masked-face English-born Nord has now really honed his craft and spent the whole year touring and performing to epic crowds that range from EDC Las Vegas to an Indian tour supporting Justin Bieber

Production-wise, he’s been just as busy with various high-profile singles peppering our year. Building on the foundations of his rampantly successful debut ‘Faded’ and ‘Alone’ in late 2016, he dropped 'Ignite' with fellow Norwegian songwriter K-391 (a track so striking that Sony adopted it as the grand salvo for their new Xperia smartphones) and the Coldplay-esque lighter-raiser ‘Tired’. As a way of saying thanks to his loyal community of fans (proudly known as Walkers), he recently dropped a new version of his early track ‘Spectre’. Bouncing with all the uplifting melodies he’s made his signature but with added vocals, it amassed 20 million views in just two weeks. That’s almost one thousand plays per minute! If 2017 has been the year he settles into his role, we suspect 2018 will be the year he takes it to a whole new level.