When he burst onto the scene as an eager, fresh-faced and naive young man, even Hardwell himself couldn't have predicted quite how much he would blow up. Experiencing almost overnight success with his uncompromising brand of dance music known as Hardstyle, the Dutchman was thrust into the limelight.
Now more mature, more resilient and growing into the producer he was always shaped to be, Hardwell has shown a lot of growth during his time away.
Soon to return with a new album, Rebels Never Die, and peddling an updated style he refers to as "big room Techno" Hardwell is well and truly back on the electronic music map.
Having served up much talked about sets at both Ultra Miami and Tomorrowland, he now has Ibiza firmly locked in his sights. Ahead of his headline show at Ushuaïa, we gave him control of aux lead to give fans an insight into what music they can expect to hear.
Hardwell's EDM playlist takeover
Hardwell | INTO THE UNKNOWN | Revealed
"This, along with BROKEN MIRROR, played a significant role in the early set up of my Rebels Never Die album. Because of how it was positioned in my return set at Ultra, it also means a lot in terms of a live set-up too. The reaction from the fans was a very emotional moment for me."
Hardwell | BLACK MAGIC | Revealed
"I love all my music, but some tracks just happen to 'pop' more than others when you drop them. BLACK MAGIC is without doubt one of those killer tracks that ignites the dancefloor."
Hardwell | GODD | Revealed
"GODD is a rework of Marco V's iconic production and one of my favourite dance tracks of all time. It's always difficult revisiting a classic and trying to do something different with such a special song, but I'm super happy with the outcome of this version."
Hardwell | PACMAN | Revealed
"I wanted to make something that was a bit tongue-in-cheek about our scene."
"Pacman's one of the most identifiable characters in gaming. The idea about it being a metaphor about program and control, running around in dark rooms, listening to repetitive electronic music felt a perfect fit to play around with for this one."
Hardwell | LASER | Revealed
"Another fan favourite which I decided to release around my Tomorrowland performance. It's had a great pull with the crowd so I'm really happy this now has an official release."
Hardwell | I FEEL LIKE DANCING | Revealed
"This single dropped today, 12 August. It's another one that is part of my current tour, taken from the new Rebels Never Die album. This track has this incredible energy and was inspired by all the euphoric Hard Trance and Techno sets I loved as an early dance music fan."
Listen to our mainstream dance music playlist in full below.
Follow the playlist here and subscribe to our Spotify channel here.
Hardwell makes an earthquake scale return to Ushuaïa Ibiza this coming Sunday 14 August for his only announced appearance of 2022. No stranger to tearing up the party hotel's dancefloor, this singular performance is definitely not one to be missed.
His new studio album, Rebels Never Die, from which lots of the music played on Sunday is taken from is out in full on 16 September.
Final tickets to join Hardwell on Sunday at this one-off, special concert can be found below.
