2000s Club Hits Essentials

Dance music exploded in the 2000s, building on the combined energies of ’90s rave, Eurodance, chart rap and club pop. The result was a shape-shifting collection of sounds and styles that mapped a thrillingly unpredictable path from the underground to the mainstream and back again. Daft Punk led the pack, twisting vintage house and disco into the kind of giddily anthemic hits that could unite veteran clubbers with casual pop fans. David Guetta, Calvin Harris and the Swedish House Mafia found crossover success by forging the upbeat sounds of electro-house, trance and progressive into festival-ready, radio-friendly fusions, thus setting the stage for the EDM boom of the 2010s. And while Britney Spears and Rihanna were slipping Top 10 hits past the nightclub’s velvet rope, old-school heads like LCD Soundsystem, Justice and Chromeo were drawing on synth-pop and disco, turning retro inspirations into a new strain of dance-floor populism.