Teenage Producer Madeon And The Democratization Of Electronic Music

When you look at the YouTube video of Madeon’s “Pop Culture”, the accompanying text that 18-year-old Hugo Leclercq wrote to describe his mega mash-up back in in July of 2011 is laughable.

“This is a little idea I’ve been playing around with to implement in my set, hope you like it,” it reads before listing the 39 songs he sampled to form the structure of “Pop Culture.”

To date, nearly 18 million people have pressed play on the track, which reads as a snapshot of Madeon’s musical zeitgeist and pop music of the past 20 years. Less than two years later, he's made the rounds at major festivals like Lollapalooza, Coachella and Sonar, and even done a stint as the opening act for Lady Gaga’s international tour.

And while Leclercq has accomplished a lot as a producer—probably as much as any 18-year-old musician can hope to—all it took to ignite his popularity was a few hours of time, a broadband internet connection, and a piece of equipment that only set him back $150.

Not bad. But what’s equally impressive as Leclercq’s velocity is the fact that his penchant for musical composition is entirely self-taught.

“I have a rejection of education,” says Leclercq, who was kicked out of school for poor attendance. “I learned English by myself, and I learned music that way too. I didn’t want to ruin the mystery of music by learning theory.”

For the uninitiated, Leclercq created “Pop Culture” with a Novation Launchpad: a 64-button glorified Light Bright for producers that interfaces with Ableton, the typical weapon of choice for most producers who happen to be live performers. The concept is simple: the Launchpad is a cybernated tabula rasa, allowing users to customize it however they wish to incorporate samples, create loops, pitch shift, and add original synth lines, among other things, on the fly.

“I thought it was a great compromise between a keyboard and a touch screen,” says Leclercq, who picked up a Launchpad specifically to bring “Pop Culture” out of his cerebellum and into reality.

Watch Leclercq’s fingers do the talking, if you haven’t already.

Leclercq is the latest poster boy for an entire generation of digital-only DJs and producers who learned their craft without ever touching a piece of vinyl, manipulating a CD-J or twiddling knobs in the studio.

“It’s the fastest way to get from an idea and conception to your final result,” Leclercq says, speaking to the efficiency of digital production. “A tool can inspire you to come up with ideas you might not have otherwise.”

Some purists are crying foul, defending the artistry of analog. Documentaries like “PressPausePlay” explore the digital democratization of music, and how tools like Autotune and beatmatching software have impacted the output of modern day artists, for better or for worse.

Leclecq doesn’t see a downside to his digital background because it allows him to place a greater emphasis on the final product than he might be able to do otherwise, while simultaneously granting him access that he might not have had if he were born 15 years earlier.

“As a music producer, I never valued musicianship as a skill. Anything that I could remove from the process of production or performance that would make it easier for me to get to the idea without relying too much on dexterity was appealing,” Leclercq explains. “It wasn’t a big ethical question. It was really natural.”

But there has to be a line somewhere, and Leclercq sees one with software that doesn’t allow for an artist to modify or build upon it in any way, like a ’69 Corvette Stingray with its hood soldered shut. iPad software like Traktor DJ, for instance, promises to make a DJ out of anybody for the price of a pizza.

“With iPad apps, the problem is that they’re only focused on the core features of DJing,” Leclercq says, speaking to things like beatmatching and locking down loops. “Software like Abelton is interesting because it can be expandable.”

And it’s in the tinkering of software where DJs can lose themselves in discovering endless features to tweak their work. Leclercq confessed to spending 150 hours on a track, illustrating that digital production might not be as automated as some purists claim.

When I was at Coachella last year, I saw Madeon play “Pop Culture,” sending hundreds of dancing festival-goers into a frenzy. But the most interesting thing I observed were people singing along to the mash-up; screaming in perfect unison as Madeon ethereally swapped vocal samples from Kylie Minogue to the Gorillaz into Dragonette and back again. Sadly, if you’re waiting for a sequel to “Pop Culture,” there’s no telling when it might happen.

“I wasn’t very well known as a producer yet and didn’t want to be known as a YouTube celebrity and go into something gimmicky,” Madeon said. “It achieved what I wanted, and it doesn’t need to be re-explored if it’s just new songs or some other gimmick like playing with 14 Launchpads or something.

It’s been two years after “Pop Culture” dropped, and I still can’t identify all 39 samples contained within it.