The battle between Avicii and David Guetta for The Untold Festival Crown

For the 240 000 people who came to the Untold Festival in Romania, expectations were raised high when it was announced that both Avicii and David Gueatta were both going to perform there. Now that the festival is finished, we can all say that both David Guetta and Avicii put on quite a show! But there always remains the questions: “Who was better?”. So without any further ado. Here is David Guetta VS Avicii at Untold…

One of the most important aspect of a DJ live set is the transition between the songs. Whether it’s leaping from a beat of 125 BPM to 128 or slowly changing the key of the song playing on the deck according to the next song, transitions are the key to keeping a good musical flow in a DJ’s set.
In terms of David Guetta, he frequently used transitions that linked songs that were in the same key. He also very often build risers using the key change functions on his deck rather than pitch matching to create a tense build up to his next song. Guetta also had moments where at the end of a few linked tracks, would create a max tension moment by stopping a track completely at the end of it and wait for the crowd to cheer up and applaud before re-starting the set.
Avicii on the other hand also had similar transitions to David Gueata but would transit from a post drop atmosphere to another drop by creating a second riser. This was useful at times but meant that the songs rarely lost energy and made the set very tiring for the audience. Avicii also rarely had complete pauses for tension which were sometimes needed to give a break to the audience.

Another important aspect to look at is the content of the set. By this I mean what songs were played and what effects were used to obtain maximum reaction from the audience.
If we look at both artists, we clearly noticed that they played many of their own songs which were crest at making the crowd sing along in joy.
Looking at David Gueatta he played many of his own songs (Bad, Titanium, When love takes over) combined with many mixes of other well known songs. I was a bit disappointed tho to see that many of the mixes he played were not his.
(For example the Hey Mama Afrojack remix). However I was very happy to see that David Guetta let the chorus of the songs he played roll through compared to Avicii who started out with a well known song but then changed it at the drop into something with a heavy rhythm and in minor key. The problem was that Avicii did this 90% of the time and so replaced the chorus of the songs with something that suited the songs less, something in the style of clubbing rather than in the style of  mainstream EDM. I felt that Avicii sometimes forgot that he was at a festival rather than being in a club. You will strongly notice this in the example below…

The last thing we can look at is the show the two made. I’m not only talking about big lasers or huge fireworks; I’m talking about how the two DJs made the crowd feel. Both had a smart sign on the big screens that wrote: “Romania make some noise” or “Romania I can’t hear you”

which was a useful thing to get the crowd going however David Gueta spoke to the crowd a lot more often than Avicii did. Avicii addressed the crowd the first time in the second half of his set which was a bit too late. David Gueta did not only address the crowd first thing but also kept messaging the crowd (even in Romanian at one point) throughout the performance. The lighting show plus the fireworks were very similar with the two however David Gueata’s technical show was slightly better, which was justified considering he was the closing act.

To conclude, even if Avicii is a younger DJ than David Gueata who has almost 2 decades of experience, it is strongly my opinion that David Gueata excelled not only in keeping the crowd at a peak of enjoyment but also at creating a truly brilliant musical act that will be remembered in the history of untold…
So if you ask me, Guetta was better than Avicii at the Untold Festival in Cluj, Romania 2015. However more is yet to come regarding the battle for the Untold Crown, so stay tuned!