After Avicii’s forced cancellation of his scheduled 2014 Ultra Music Festival performance because of his gallbladder removal surgery, Deadmau5 gladly stepped in to “help a friend out.”
But the Canadian dance music phenomenon did far more than help a friend out at UMF—he started an EDM word war between those that found his performance and tweets agreeable and those that didn’t.
“lemme know if garrix plays animals…” Zimmerman tweeted before his set, “and the set contains at LEAST 1 countdown from 10. thanks.”
And so the producer’s controversial fun began.
Before his set Zimmerman tweeted, “throwing some random bullshit together for the set… holy shit I’m such a dick, this is gunna be awesome.”
Deadmau5 delivered by bringing the “Animals” home to old MacDonald.
The producer used Martin Garrix’s No. 1 hit single,“Animals,” and found a reworked version that turned the track’s drop into “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
Deadmau5 seemed to enjoy his joke as he happily danced on stage.
He finalized the reworking by tweeting “I am an evil genius.”
A tug of word wars ensued after the performance with EDM enthusiasts taking sides either against Deadmau5’s decision to use the reworking or defending it.
There was and still is no response from Martin Garrix for Deadmau5’s use of the reworking of “Animals” but Tiesto recently defended Garrix tweeting “animals by Martin Garrix was and is an amazing epic track and he has 100 more epic releases coming in the future #supertalent.”
