To listen to Billy Gillies is to capture true joy, because every song he produces and DJ set he performs radiates pure passion and vibrant spirit.

 

The Northern Irishman’s blend of quirky Eurodance synths, uplifting trance grandeur and hard-hitting bass rhythms goes beyond catchy melodies and expert timing, as breakout hits “Lagoon” and “Youth” tap into the very essence of what makes a night spent on the dancefloor with your best mates such a special experience.

 

That’s why he’s earned more than 145 million views on TikTok, filled a Creamfields tent with thousands of ravers at 1 p.m. on a Sunday, and why he’s managed to get an official remix of Madison Avenue’s 1999 hit “Don’t Call Me Baby” after ripping the iconic vocal off the internet.

 

Crowds chant his name from Taiwan to Texas because Billy Gillies dares to do something different; something unique to himself. Now, Billy Gillies is the next superstar-DJ-in-the-making, poised to take over the world.

 

Billy’s musical obsession started in the 2000s when his older sister started buying Clubland compilation CDs and dating a local DJ. One night, the boyfriend came over and brought his decks, but when the couple left to go dancing, 11-year-old Billy snuck into his sister’s room and started playing with the turntables.

 

“I was like, ‘what is this music? I love this,’” he laughs. “On the Christmas list for that year was a set of decks.”

 

His mom delivered with his first set of Kam belt drives, and Billy’s been mad for mixing ever since. Each Saturday, he’d head out of the house with a five Pound note and spend it on a new record (Tiesto’s Traffic being particularly influential). In turn, he’d spend the next week learning to mix that record in and out of his steadily growing collection.

 

When he was 17, he got his first taste of true Clubland. A year underaged, he caught an hour-long bus from Belfast to Banbridge and talked his way into a club called Coach. Japanese DJ Yoji Biomehanika and the UK’s own Lisa Lashes dropped heavy hard-house records all night, and Billy started dreaming of his own chance to rock a crowd, proper.

 

He knew that if he wanted to be an in-demand DJ, he’d have to come up with some original songs. In 2011, he locked himself in his bedroom with a copy of Ableton Live and didn’t come out until he’d mastered the basic trance sound.

 

He fell in love with music production and started sending his tracks to BBC Radio 1 DJ Judge Jules, who played them on his show every Friday night. For 19-year-old Billy, there was nothing better.

 

After spending much of his 20s as a self-described “party animal,” 28-year-old Billy once again locked himself inside his bedroom and churned out a ton of original tunes. The result? A spot on the lineup of Luminosity 2019 alongside major trance legends Paul Van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Gareth Emery and more. He played a set of all-original material, and when a recording was posted to Soundcloud, it earned more plays than any of the headliners.

 

“I’d brung a fresh sound into the trance scene,” Gillies says. “Everyone was making the same type of thing, where I just look back at my influences growing up and crammed it into the main trance style.”

 

International booking requests flooded in, sending him to Argentina to Australia—and then COVID struck. Many of his peers saw no point releasing music to a locked-down crowd, but Billy saw a chance to experiment.

 

“People need music in hard times, not just for clubs,” he says. “The music I was making around that time was proper emotional melodies, and it was resonating with everyone.”

 

He’d share each tune in a rough clip to Facebook or TikTok, and every post brought shares in the thousands. His fan base wasn’t just growing, it was ballooning, due in part not only to his masterful skills in the studio but also his effervescent personality that spills into each tune.

https://www.whamtour.com/

Some artists define a genre, but Lil Baby defines a generation. The GRAMMY Award-winning rapper has smashed records, made history, and impacted the course of modern hip-hop with his instantly identifiable and inimitable style. He has garnered dozens of multi platinum certifications and tens of billions of streams as arguably the biggest new rapper to emerge this decade. Following the success of his platinum full-length debut Harder Than Ever in 2018, he seized #1 on the Billboard Top 200 with 2020’s My Turn, becoming “the year’s #1 selling and #1 streaming album in the US.” At first, it cemented him as “2020’s first and only artist to go double-platinum,” but it has since gone quadruple-platinum and has logged 85 weeks in the top 10 of the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart – marking the longest top-tier run in the chart’s history. 

 

He notably tied Prince and Paul McCartney for Billboard Hot 100 hits and Taylor Swift for “most weeks atop the Billboard Top 200 in 2020” with a total of 6. Out of eight nominations, he scored his first GRAMMY® Award in 2022. He has appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone and the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players Issue in addition to receiving honors from VEVO, Rap Caviar, the Apple Music Awards, and more. He teamed up with Lil Durk for The Voice of the Heroes, marking his second #1 debut on the Billboard Top 200. It’s just the beginning though. He’s bound to revolutionize the culture again with his third album in 2022. Most recently, he released “Right On” and “In A Minute” which both songs debuted on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. This feat puts Lil Baby in rare territory, making him the youngest of only 12 artists to have ever landed 100 or more songs on the Hot 100. This generation belongs to Lil Baby.

10 weeks, 10 songs, 10 cities
https://linktr.ee/Fredagain

Adamwinter123 is following