Xfinite Radio Artist Spotlight

There are singers, and then there is Whitney Houston. The first time I heard that voice come through a real sound system, I understood the difference in about four seconds. It wasn't just powerful — it was clean, controlled, and completely fearless. When Whitney sang, she didn't chase the note. The note came to her. Her peak run in the eighties reads like somebody made it up. "Saving All My Love for You," "How Will I Know," "Greatest Love of All," "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" — seven straight number-one singles in a row, a streak nobody had pulled off before. She could take a ballad and make a whole room hold its breath, then turn around and make that same room dance like nobody was watching. And "I Will Always Love You" came later and proved what we already knew: there has never been another voice quite like hers. Here's the booth angle: every DJ has a record they save for the moment a night needs rescuing, and for me, ...

If you spent any time behind a DJ booth in the seventies — or any time at a party since — you know the Eagles aren't just a band. They're a mood. Put on "Take It Easy" and the whole room loosens up a notch. Put on "Hotel California" and everybody, from the teenagers to the grandparents, suddenly knows every single word. The Eagles came out of the California country-rock scene and turned it into something bigger than anybody expected. "Desperado," "Lyin' Eyes," "One of These Nights," "Life in the Fast Lane" — that's a run of songs that doesn't sound like a greatest-hits album, it sounds like a whole era. And then there's "Hotel California," one of those rare songs that never gets old no matter how many times you hear it, because every listen finds something new in it: that guitar work, that mystery, that feeling of a place you can check into but never quite leave. Here's the booth angle: I ...

Ask any DJ who's worked a wedding, a club, or a backyard party in the last fifteen years, and they'll tell you the same thing: when the floor starts to thin out, you put on Bruno Mars. It works every single time. Bruno came up the old-school way — playing lounges, learning to work a room, and studying the greats until he could do a little bit of all of them. Then "Just the Way You Are" and "Grenade" made him a star, and he never looked back. "Locked Out of Heaven," "Treasure," "24K Magic," "That's What I Like" — that's not just a run of hits, that's a whole night's playlist from one guy. And then there's "Uptown Funk" with Mark Ronson, a song so big it basically became its own decade. Here's the booth angle: I learned early on that Bruno is my emergency button. I remember one reception where the energy was dipping — dinner ran long, the older crowd was tired, the younger crowd was rest...

If you DJ'd a single dance in the 90s, you know the feeling: you drop "Waterfalls" and the whole room sings the first line before you even get your hand off the fader. T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli didn't just have hits — they had anthems that everybody knew, from the kids in the front row to the parents pretending they weren't dancing in the back. TLC came out of Atlanta in the early 90s with a sound and a style nobody else was touching. "Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg" and "Baby-Baby-Baby" put them on the map, but CrazySexyCool made them legends — smooth, confident, and cool in a way that still sounds fresh today. Then FanMail took it even further, with "No Scrubs" becoming one of those rare songs that defines a whole era. Four Grammys, tens of millions of albums sold, and a run of hits that never really left radio. Here's the booth angle: I learned fast that TLC was my secret weapon for a mixed crowd. At a party years back, I had the ...

Every DJ has a record that can restart a room all by itself. For me, that record is "Billie Jean." I've watched that bassline do the same thing for thirty-one years: the second it drops, heads turn, feet start moving, and somebody on the floor tries the Moonwalk. They never quite nail it. They always have the time of their life trying. That's the thing about Michael Jackson — he didn't just have hits, he had moments that rewrote what pop music could be. He came up as a kid with the Jackson 5, then grew into the biggest solo star the world has ever seen. Thriller alone sold over 70 million copies and is still the best-selling album of all time, and it wasn't just sales. "Beat It," "Billie Jean," "Thriller" — every one of those songs changed the sound of radio and the look of music videos forever. He made the video an event, the dance move a language, and the album a world you lived inside. Here's the booth angle: I learned ea...

There comes a point where "pop star" stops being a big enough word. Taylor Swift crossed that line somewhere around 2023, and honestly, she never looked back. I've been a DJ for three decades — I've watched artists dominate a summer, dominate a year, even dominate a decade. I've never seen anyone dominate the entire conversation the way Taylor has. She started as a teenage country singer-songwriter with a guitar and a diary full of honest songs. Then she reinvented herself — fearless pop on 1989, synth-soaked intimacy on Folklore, full stadium maximalism on the Eras Tour. And here's the part that matters: she didn't chase trends, she made them. She re-recorded her entire catalog to take her masters back and fans followed her through it. Who does that? Who gets a stadium of 70,000 people to sing every word of a ten-minute song like "All Too Well" like it's a national anthem? Taylor does. Here's my booth story: wedding receptions are my rea...