From: “Marshmello.”
DJ style: “Future bounce.”
Best known for: “Smile.”
Fave tune of 2018: “‘Reasons To Run’ Crankdat.”
Breakthrough DJ/producer of 2018: “Slushii.”
Refusing to budge after first claiming the number 10 spot last year, the man in the big white can, Marshmello, holds place. “My Mellogang is family and their support means everything to me,” he tells DJ Mag about the win.
Aside from avoiding sharp sticks and campfires, Marshy has spent the past 12 months proving he’s one of the world’s hottest collaborators. His track with UK singer Anne-Marie ‘Friends’ (from her debut album), went platinum in August; he’s announced releases with Chicago rapper Juice WRLD and Arabic music legend Amr Diab are on the way; and perhaps the biggest team up of all came with the drop of ‘Happier’, featuring indie-rock/synth-pop group, Bastille. Despite being a massive, vocal-led dance-pop banger, it came with a heartbreaking video in which a young girl has to have her pooch put down —way to flip that one M-dawg!
Strangely, when the Mello Man’s second studio album ‘Joytime II’ landed in June, it didn’t feature any guests at all, with the producer instead opting to go solo across all nine tracks. This didn’t seem to bother fans too much, though, as the album still managed to hit the number one spot in the Billboard Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. Outside of music, Grand-Marsh-ter Flash has been getting up to all sorts of hijinks too. Despite Skrillex accidentally revealing his identity a couple of times, and Forbes officially outing him as Chris Comstock (aka Dotcom) at the end of last year when they discovered both names were linked to the same tracks on royalty manager BMI’s database, the secretive DJ continued to have fun with his supposed anonymity. After previously having legendary Dutch DJ Tiësto and comedian Will Ferrell both reveal themselves as the man behind the mask, 2018 saw singer Shawn Mendes appear from under the helmet at the iHeartRadio Much Music Video Awards.
The White One — or rather, a suspiciously athletic-looking version — also appeared on the American version of the obstacle course-based TV show Ninja Warrior. And it wasn’t all physical competitions either; his personal highlight of the year was “winning the Fortnite Pro-Am with my buddy Ninja,” he tells DJ Mag. He and the gamer/Twitch star secured a $1 million prize, which they split between charities of their choice. And being the sweetie (geddit?) that he is, Mr Mello recently donated another $500,000 to the Kids In Need of Defense Foundation, a charity which helps to protect refugee children within the legal system. What a lovely chap!
Words: BRIAN FANTANA
