Musician Spotlight: Zedd

Who is Zedd?

Anton Zaslavski, aka Zedd, is a Russian- German DJ, record producer, and songwriter born in 1989. He was born in Saratov, Russia, and moved to Dansenberg, Kaiserslautern, with his family at three years. It was at this state that Zedd grew up and began his music career.

Zedd originates from a Jewish family of three children; he has two brothers, Arkadi and Daniel. His parents were musicians, with his father, Igor Zaslavski, a guitarist, and the mother, Marina Vladimirovna, a piano teacher.

Zedd currently resides in Las Vegas and is single after breaking up with his girlfriend, Selena Gomez.

Zedd is a trained musician who learned how to play piano from his mother at four. By age 12, he had learned the nitty-gritty of classical music and drums. The French electronic duo Justice positively influenced his passion for music. To develop his talent, he ventured into making remixes of various artists such as Lady Gaga.

In 2002, Zedd signed a contract with Lifeforce Records and began his career as a drummer with the metallic fusion band Dioramic where he stayed till 2010.

To date, Zedd has ten music videos, seven E.P.s, 26 singles, and 27 remixes. He also has two studio albums named Clarity and True colors.

Moreover, Zedd has managed to do three tours, namely the Moment of Clarity World Tour in 2013, the True Color Tour in 2015, and the Echo tour in 2017-2018.

Music Genre

Zedd is famous for his heavy electronic genre of music which he primarily focuses on. He has also diversified to other genres such as pop music, dance-pop, future bass, and house over the years.

His musical style can be heard in this live performance of “Stay”:

Major Achievements

Zedd brought home the International Dance Music award in 2012, where he got an award as the best breakthrough artist. In 2014, his song Clarity and the album won the Grammy as the best dance recording and European Border Breakers Award: German.

Zedd has also won the ASCAP Awards, where his songs Clarity, Break Free and stay the Night emerged as the most performed song. In 2015 Zedd’s single, I want you to know, bagged home the Choice Theme Song honor during the Teen Choice Awards.

His second album, True Colors, won the Top Dance/ Electronic Album during the 2016 Billboard Music Awards. Zedd also won the MTV Clubland Award with his single Stay in 2017.

The same single also emerged as the Dance Song of the Year during the2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards.

In 2019, Zedd won in the APRA Music Awards under the category Dance Work of the Year, and Most Played Australian Work with his hit song “The Middle” ft Maren Morris & Grey. Zedd has also managed to appear in TV commercials for Bud Light Platinum Beer and T-Mobile.

Music Instruments

Most of Zedd’s songs are composed using the piano. He also uses Cubase’s suite of music production to create most of his songs. Moreover, Zedd uses piano, keyboards, drums, an audio interface, Sylenth1, Nexus, Synthmaster 2.6, and Omnisphere synthesizer instruments to make his music.