10 July 2015
Country-core fashion and country-adjacent pop have been huge in 2024-25. The countrifyin’ of chart pop goes back a lot further, though. In particular, the colossal success of Avicii’s ‘Wake Me Up’ in 2013 helped make country vocal-hook choruses a cheap, easy and popular option for shoehorning a bit of basic-bait sentimentality into your Saturday-night EDM. ‘Are You With Me’ in 2015 follows that template to bland, maudlin effect.
What’s more notable here is the artist credit. ‘Are You With Me’ is originally by a US country dude called Easton Corbin, whose voice you still hear on this. Lost Frequencies, however, is the nom de DJ of Belgium’s Felix De Laet, who remixed Corbin’s track by speeding it up and dropping in some beats. Unlike the previous year’s ‘Prayer In C’ by Lilly Wood and The Prick with Robin Schultz—another likely corporate influence here—the original performer remains on the track but doesn’t get a billing on the chart-topping remix of what is still his own record. That’s for Corbin, De Laet and their “people” to sort out, though. Me, I lost interest in ‘Are You With Me’ a paragraph ago.
