The Galactic Circus gambit

The residency runs Fridays, from mid-June through early October. It is Guetta’s attempt to own a stretch of nights, to bend an island’s calendar to him. Ibiza is full of neon dreams and stale promises; he wants to be the promise people believe again.

Inside the venue, the rigging looks like scaffolding for a space station. LED rings, haze machines, towers rising like antennae. It’s ambitious. Perhaps too ambitious. He worries whether in the rush of production, the music will be drowned by spectacle. The filing cabinet of shows past hums: residencies that promised “immersive experiences” but delivered bland light shows.

He thinks of other DJs who tried something grand. Deadmau5’s Cube tours had their moments, but sometimes the music got lost under the weight. Armin van Buuren’s trance narratives drifted into predictability. Guetta longs to avoid that trap – to let crowd and music remain the core.

At midnight, the first set begins. The thump, the build, the transitions – in moments his fingers feel the familiar friction, the mix edges smooth. But around him, stage directors shout cues, technicians fiddle. He hears the muffled voice telling him: “Lights in 10 seconds. Move left, shift down.” It feels like being backstage in a bureaucracy, required to obey yet supposed to soar. He thinks: even the wildest art must pass through a permit office at some point.

The crowd responds. They raise their arms, the beats match heartbeats. For that stretch, the absurd becomes plausible.

Reunion with Sia: “Beautiful People”

“Beautiful People,” released in March, is Guetta’s reunion with Sia – their ninth collaboration. The song was first demoed years ago; now it surfaces in full bloom.

When the track dropped, many remarked how it echoed their past hits – “Titanium,” “She Wolf.” But Guetta isn’t content with nostalgia. He wanted to synthesize the familiar and the new, to let memory brush up against novelty.

He listens to the final mix late at night, in his studio apartment somewhere between flights. The vocal from Sia, haunting, holds tension. The drop comes, after a pause, and it hits like a delayed verdict. He nods slowly. The song works.

He imagines labels in Manhattan, marketing memos with diagrams: “Target Demographic,” “Streaming Projections.” He is used to that. He’s worn that suit many times. But in the quiet of his personal studio, he reminds himself: the music is the only thing that might last, before bureaucracy erodes everything else.

In interviews, he jokes: “This is the comeback we’ve been planning since 2013.” That delayed timeline is part of the charm – a song that waited years to find its moment. Others release dozens of tracks a year. But sometimes waiting yields sharper edges.

He thinks of Calvin Harris. He publicly praised Harris’s recent hit Blessings. Their careers run parallel – two DJs who crossed into pop, who have promoters who once paired them. Guetta recalls evenings when booking agents would whisper: “Guetta and Harris, that’s your lineup.” He hated that – to share the spotlight when he wanted it alone. Yet now he speaks warmly of Harris. The tension hasn’t gone entirely; it simmers. He knows: admiration and rivalry often share a thin wall.

Reclaiming world’s No. 1

In late September, DJ Mag announced: David Guetta is again World’s Number 1 DJ. His fifth time topping the poll. He ties with Martin Garrix and Armin van Buuren for the record.

This time, the crowning was done live in Ibiza. He performed a two-hour headline set that night, before the awards.

He stood under lights, felt the applause wash over him. And yet, internally, he sensed the thin membrane: the poll is a popularity contest, influenced by streaming, by marketing, by social media momentum. It is not a certificate of truth. It is a mirror, and mirrors lie.

Still, to reclaim it after so many years means something. It says he is not done. It gives him a weapon against the whispers: “He’s old,” “He’s passé.” It lets him say: “Look, the crowd still chose me.” But he knows crowds are fickle; they vote in waves. The next year might see someone new crest.

Other DJs have faced similar cycles. Tiësto, mid-career, reinvented himself again and again. Deadmau5 drifted in and out of relevance. Armin had to recall his trance roots to remind fans why they loved him. Guetta watches them – he takes notes – but he also knows he has one advantage: he built bridges to pop, to mainstream, and never fully abandoned the dancefloor. That crosswalk is both path and trap.

Internal ruminations, humiliations, decay

In quiet moments, Guetta ruminates. He recalls meetings in label offices, where he proposed a bold sound and got stares. He remembers being told: “No, that’s too weird,” “Stick to what works.” He sculpts those memories in his mind like a filing cabinet that forgot its purpose.

He fears irrelevance. He fears audiences thin, nights empty. He fears when people come to see spectacle and not music, when the lights drown out the beat. He wonders if his name will become a brand easier than a creative identity. He imagines a future where “David Guetta experience” is a trademark, like a festival franchise, with audit reports, bottom lines, spreadsheets on guest lists. He senses a bureaucracy creeping – not in government, but in art.

He remembers when he would DJ eight hours straight, six nights a week. That kind of stamina is impossible now. His bones disagree. Yet he must choose: rest and fade, or push and risk collapse. He pushes.

Sometimes he suffers small humiliations: a miscue in a set, the technical glitch that silences the track for a second, the engineer whispering “signal lost.” He hates when someone in the VIP shouts, “Play that one again,” as though the set is a jukebox. He sees promoters more concerned with who’s in the VIP table than the mix. He feels like a cog in an event that centres people, tables, packages.

He senses decay – not of himself, but of the system. Streaming algorithms flatten nuance. Festival fees inflate; club nights close under city ordinances. The paperwork for sound permits, local curfews, safety inspections – that’s the new baseline.

Guetta feels he is walking through a building whose corridors are slowly being repurposed into offices, storage rooms, forgotten stairwells. The music is the space that rebels, that threatens to burst walls.

He thinks of how Martin Garrix ascended quickly, younger, fierce, popping up in charts as Guetta was already well established. Garrix built his audience organically, riding festival hype, producing with relentless output. Guetta respects him. He knows that if Garrix had emerged in any other time, he might have envied him more.

He glances at press releases about his own output: more than one single a month this year. He used to marvel at DJs who could release that much. Now he matches them. He sometimes suspects he’s become the very model he once bristled at – a hyperactive producer, churner of tracks, a factory of beats. But then he thinks: if you can’t outrun the machine, you might as well drive it.

He recalls earlier in his career, when being French in an Anglo-dominated dance world was a subtle handicap. He had to push harder, network more, break language barriers. Now he tours stadiums. If someone had told his younger self that, he would have laughed in disbelief.

And yet: irony is kind. Many DJs who once loomed large now struggle to headline large rooms. The cycle of fame in dance is short. The crowd’s taste shifts like wind. Guetta knows he is older; he knows some nights the crowd will come for nostalgia, not new surprises. He steels himself.

Night, applause, afterimage

At UNVRS, the crowd roars. He stands at the mixer, sweat on his brow, the speakers thudding. The visuals swirl – planetary rings, beams, lasers slicing the dark. He plays transition after transition, nudges the mix, hears snippets of exultation. The crowd screams.

He allows himself a small smile. But he does not exult. He thinks: this night is a slip of time. Tomorrow the machinery resumes. The bookings, the contracts, the bills, the tax forms, the guest rider changes.

At the end, he steps off stage into hallways of cables, crates, a technician asking about reset. He walks past folding chairs, empty water bottles, the smell of sweat and ozone. He thinks: the residue of that night will live in voices – echoes carried home by taxis, by insomnia, by headphones.

He knows tomorrow he’ll wake in another city, another sky. He’ll ask: can I make something alive again? He’ll check his phone: messages, streaming stats, tweets. The bureaucracy of success. He’ll see polls, algorithmic counts. He’ll see where he ranks tomorrow.

Then he’ll open his laptop, load his templates, begin a new session, push play. And he’ll try once more to turn data into feeling.