‘It’s hard to be happy when you’re so unsatisfied with yourself’: David Guetta reveals all in first episode of Spotify’s new interview series

Many know Guy Raz from NPR’s popular podcasts “TED Radio Hour” and “How I Built This.” Now the radio show host has launched a brand new artist interview series on Spotify. Titled The Rewind with Guy Raz, the podcast seeks to go beyond the scope of a traditional music interview to unpack what artists love, what they fear, and the ways fame forever transformed their lives.

The first episode of the series taps French dance music trailblazer David Guetta, whose just coming off his seventh studio album release. Once inside the studio, Guetta digs deep to reflect on how dance music entered the global mainstream consciousness and the steps he took to become a global pop icon. “For me it was never money driven. It was more like, I felt like society was not fair and I wanted to prove a point,” Guetta shared.

“I was in the underground not because I wanted to be. I was in the underground because I had no choice,” he continued. “But all I wanted was to share this music with the world. Today, the undergrounds DJ…see themselves as [the] elite. I was never like this. I was like, this is what I love. I want everyone to love it too.”

Guetta provides an intimate commentary on growing up in Paris as the black sheep in a family of socialist intellectuals, how he got his first gig at the age of 17 DJing in a Paris gay club, and how he launched his career with the help of Daft Punk.

“I want[ed] to bring everyone together, I want[ed] to bring rich and poor together, I want[ed] to share [my music] with the entire universe. If you believe in your heart that the music we make is the best music, why could we not be as big as rock and hip-hop? I wanted to be as big as rock and hip-hop.”

He goes on to reveal how much pressure people in the music industry are under, but how he uses that pressure as a positive to drive his work.

“I’m a very unsatisfied person. It’s hard to be happy when you’re so unsatisfied with yourself. But it’s also probably also what gives me the drive to aways work more and challenge myself. So I guess it’s a curse for myself but, at the same time, something good for my career.”

Listen to the full episode below.