Interscope Records’ SVP Of A&R Nick Groff On The Evolution Of Making A Hit Dance Track

What does it take to create a hit dance music track? Nick Groff, senior vice president of A&R at Interscope Records, has been integral to helping create many chart-topping dance hits throughout his 13 years at the imprint, having worked with numerous acclaimed artists including Avicii, Billie Ellish, Gryffin, Machine Gun Kelly, YUNGBLUD, Jacob Collier, slowthai and Mura Masa. 

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According to Groff, much of the dance music that was breaking prior to the explosion of Swedish House Mafia, Avicii and David Guetta in mainstream dance music was very sample and instrumental driven, which led to it not being as focused on the song. However, this template of creating dance music changed with Avicii’s hit song, “Levels.” 

Groff began working with Avicii in 2011 around the time “Levels” was released. The song was well received on the dance floor, but there was concern it wouldn’t break into the Top 40 without a traditional song structure attached. Groff, former president of Geffen Records Neil Jacobson and Interscope’s radio team decided to structure the song in a traditional pop song format as opposed to the hook sample of the original. This was done to give “Levels” legs at the Top 40 and arrange it in a familiar way for the format. Though the team went through this exercise, they kept the original so none of the song structure versions were released. However, Groff says that this traditional pop song process opened Avicii’s eyes to the possibilities of working with songwriters earlier in the creation of his singles, which was a new concept to artists within the dance genre. 

Avicii began starting songs by first pairing them with a single acoustic accompaniment, and he continued to use this process for his hit True album, adding the drums and texture of a record after the song’s lyric and melody were created. This allowed the songs to be judged on the quality of songwriting rather than the texture of the production. “I truly believe that’s what makes ‘Wake Me Up’ so special. The song itself is timeless, and Avicii’s production on top adds the hit potential of the moment,” Groff says. “This process was replicated across that True album and became the standard for how [Avicii] produced most of his music after and became standard for the scene on how to chase demos that may work in dance music.  Tempos have changed, but the general statement directly after by publishers and creators was, ‘write a song on guitar or piano at 128 BPM and let’s send it to a DJ. It will work.’”

This new template has become the norm for many dance music producers to this day. So how does an artist stand out then? Groff cites Gryffin as an artist who has been able to do so by utilizing the power of the remix. “The remix is just an underutilized tool, I feel, where you’re taking a song that’s already liked by certain people and you’re flipping your own production on it,” Groff says. Gryffin’s career started by flipping popular indie tracks into dance singles, which allowed him to garner attention from listeners in that genre and get them into his fan base. Groff notes that Marshmello—who has worked with artists in other genres including Migos, Halsey, YUNGBLUD, blackbear, Bastille and Kane Brown—and German producers BUNT—who have touched on dance, pop, folk, soul and Latin music in their work—are artists who have also been successful at transcending genres.

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Groff adds that Mura Masa, whom he has worked with, has also been successful at merging genres. Groff initially began working with Mura Masa prior to his hit track “Love$ick,” which was only an instrumental at first and Groff helped secure getting A$AP Rocky on the song. The artist’s self-titled album Mura Masa is another example of the producer’s ability to be a chameleon as he boasts collaborations with artists across numerous genres, such as as Damon Albarn of Gorillaz, Charli XCX, Christine & The Queens, Wolf Alice, Clairo, slowthai and Desiigner. 

Groff says Mura Masa sounds cohesive despite it boasting toplines from artist in various genres, because it features the same signature beat style that Mura Masa is known for—allowing him to provide a distinct flair to his music while garnering the attention of fans in other genres. Groff cites Skrillex’s remixes of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” La Roux’s “In For The Kill” and i SQUARE’s “Hey Sexy Lady” as similar implementations of this. 

“The throughline for all of those early Skrillex remixes was how insanely interesting his productions were,” Groff says. “They were trying to make up a genre for what it was. It was complex electronic music and they were throwing out weird terms like ‘complextro.’ It was just a really interesting way to combine what he was doing with complex guitar-driven and awesome, organic-driven music with dance music.” 

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Considering the impressive lineup of artists Groff has worked with, one may wonder what he looks for in an artist. Groff says he is seeking artists who can create culture instead of just fitting into it, such as Billie Ellish, whom he discovered, and Jacob Collier, whom Groff says he believes is currently the most talented musician in the world and recently received three Grammy nominations. 

“I’m honestly looking for artists that are just so different from everything else in that scene,” he says.