Pretty Lights [EDIT]

One Liner:  Honestly enjoyable electronic background music

Wikipedia Genre:  Electronic, hip hop, soul
Home: Fort Collins, CO

Poster Position: Headliner!
Both Weekends.
Saturday at 8:10.

Honda Stage.

Thoughts:  Interesting.  Search for "pretty" on Spotify, and the first result is Pretty Hate Machine, the NIN album.  Add in an "L" and you get the Chili's song "Pretty Little Ditty," made semi-more-famous by the Crazy Town track "Butterfly".  Add an "i" and you still get that same song.  Only when you add the "g" do you get this artist.  To me, that bodes poorly for the actual popularity of the 6th name on the poster.  And actually, fascinatingly, his stream counts are really low too, for a headliner.  Only one track over 100 million?  What are we doing here?

At the same time, that one popular song is a banger.  "Finally Moving" combines a sample from Etta James, chill guitar noodling, some table scratching, and a dope beat that feels like you are walking a catwalk in your most comfortable, regular clothes in front of your best friends.  106.5 million streams.

Word.  That is cool.  Although, strangely, it is old - that was on an album released in 2006.

Real name is Derek Vincent Smith.  It was originally a duo with a guy named Michael Menert, but he bounced after the first album.  Rick Rubin apparently once called this the "face and voice of the new American electronic music scene."  High praise.  And apparently no one listened since no one is really streaming these tunes.  Smith made a band called The Freeze as a teen, and then ended up at CU Boulder before dropping out to focus on music.  AT first, he and Menert were doing the late night shift for some bigger acts like Widespread and STS9, and by 2009 they were playing Bonnaroo and other festivals.  2010 brought even more festivals, including Coachella, and that appears to be his main thing now.  He distributes all of his music for free on his Pretty Lights Music label.  He took a hiatus between 2018 and 2023, but now is back at it.

Very few actual albums - 2006's Taking Up Your Precious Time is the one that features the jam above.  Nothing else on that disc breaks 4 million streams.  2008 saw a double album called Filling Up The City Skies, and then 2009 has Passing by Behind Your Eyes.  Three EPs in 2010, then a few singles until 2013's A Color Map of the Sun.  His most recent release is a 2017 single.  So I guess the new launch is just to tour, and not to release new tunes.  The other top original track is from that 2013 album, "Yellow Bird" has 18.4 million streams.

Another chilled out track that feels like it is sampling something old, but I think those are real studio musicians making a lot of those sounds.  He definitely goes into some of that harder-edged stuff, the Skrillex or Bassnectar type with the harder guitars and heavy bass.  "Go Down Sunshine" is an example.  But a lot of these tunes have a more laid-back feel to them, like they'd be great for an afternoon set with a few beers.  

Truly not sure why this fella is a headliner, but I have definitely heard worse electronic music in my years of going through ACL artists.

You know what?  I pulled up this live set he did in the Caverns in Tennessee, and it is pretty freaking rad.

Push it up to about 55 minutes in, and check out the use he is making of that Margo Price lyric ("let's go baaaaaack to Tennessee!") and then the slice of Doobie Brothers ("hear some funky dixieland!") by weaving that into the groove for a while.  At around 2:05 he starts splicing in some "Jolene" and that is also extremely fun.  I can dig that style of thoughtful remixing for the space where the show is happening...