[Creator] The Chainsmokers

**Swyx** (0:00)
Today, on the creator track, we're going to talk about the Chate Smokers.

**Drew Taggart** (0:34)
I really need one, but first, let me take a selfie.

**Swyx** (0:38)
So yeah, if you're annoyed by this song, I apologize. I do think it's one of the more revolutionary songs because it just has a story, it reflects a part of life that maybe isn't so, people are not really proud of it, but it really happens. I met girls like this. And it's fun, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and I just think it's a good bop at the end of the day.
But the Chainsmokers themselves have a good story to tell about it. And so here's the actual podcast clip that we're playing, which is from Guy Raz's new podcast, The Great Creators.

**Guy Raz** (1:11)
Hey, welcome back to The Great Creators. I'm Guy Raz. So while the Chainsmokers were dominating the online remix world, they started making original music and hit it big with one of their first records, a novelty song called Selfie that pokes fun at women taking photos of themselves at a club.
I know that you guys probably about a year and a half into your collaboration together, you did have a hit, a success with a song called Selfie, which I know you guys are sort of embarrassed about now, and I know that it sort of makes you cringe, but still, I mean, you got a lot of traction from the song. Anybody who knows that song knows it's kind of a novelty song. You could have been and probably were destined to that point to kind of be like a novelty act and that was it. Like in a sense, were you worried at the success of that song? Were you worried that maybe you had peaked at that point and you wouldn't be able to recover from that perception of being a novelty act?

**Drew Taggart** (2:12)
We were pretty resilient in knowing what we wanted Chainsmokers to be, but it was a very confusing time, a very confusing experience. You know, essentially we made selfie. We had all these bloggers writing about our remixes at this point. We had this really cool Indie electronic fan base.
We had started touring a little bit out of New York City. We were going to colleges. We were going to DC. We were going to Florida. It was cool. And then we kind of made this song to promote our first night at Live Nightclub in Miami. That was literally the full... We thought that we'll post this, and all the blogs will write about it. Then they'll write about our show. I don't know what our thought process was there.
And we put it out and everyone was like, this song is hilarious. And it sounded nothing like anything we were making at the time. And that was a really... And I don't know if the decision to embrace the success of that song was harmful or helpful to us. Because we went from having this cool, what we thought was big fan base at the time, to having this massive song that no one respected. All of our idols, all of our peers in the dance world, all of the people that we looked up to, we were like the laughing stock of EDM at that point. And I think...

**Guy Raz** (3:30)
Did that matter to you? I mean, I know Deadmau5 tweeted out, the only thing that you guys in EDM have in common is cancer at that moment. And Porter Robinson, DJ, people were kind of... Did you guys...
Did that hurt? Or did you think, you know what, let's just...

**Drew Taggart** (3:48)
Yeah, to this day, those two are like two of... I've always looked up to them as producers and artists, and especially Deadmau5. I was a massive fan of him. And we knew it was cringy, and I think that was what makes it hurt a little bit more.

**Alex Pall** (4:06)
But there was a moment when we were like...
I would say there's probably two weeks where that song was cool. And then there was another six months or eight months of playing that song. But everywhere we played it, people loved it. And we were traveling the world and finally in a position where we actually really didn't have to worry about how we were going to pay our rent next month. And what happened is somewhere along the way of the life cycle of anything, it was just like you got to that point where you were like, what is going on right now with this song? You know what I mean?
Like now we're actually having to start meeting people that we admire and hanging around at festivals with them. And this is our crown jewel right here. And that kind of sucked. But we always believed in ourselves. At no point did we not think we had more of the offer. But we began to realize and be more self-aware of what people thought about us. And we were kind of stuck in this weird position where we knew we had more of the show. And this wasn't a song that was indicative of the type of artist that we wanted to be. But that's all people really had to go on. And some people thought we were two chicks. People didn't even think we were two guys.