Top 10 Facts about Deadmau5

Top 10 Facts about Deadmau5

Deadmau5 is a Canadian electronic dance music (EDM) producer and performer who was at the forefront of the revitalization of that genre in the 2000s.

His headlining set at Lollapalooza in 2011 was a turning point for electronic music, taking the genre from the side stages to the main stage, front and centre in many festivals around the world.

In addition to mainly producing progressive house music, he also produces and DJs other genres of electronic music, including techno under the alias Testpilot.

Deadmau5 is known for his electric performances all around the world. Below, we discuss the top 10 facts about Deadmau5;

1. Named after an actual dead mouse

Mouse – Flickr

Deadmau5 was born on January, 5 1981 in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. His parents Nancy Johnson and Rodney Thomas “Rod” Zimmerman named him Joel Thomas Zimmerman.

In 2002 Zimmerman became known as the “dead mouse guy” after telling people in an Internet chat room that he had found a dead mouse in his computer.

Instead of shirking the tag, he embraced the moniker and added a 5 instead of the last two alphabets because of character limitation within the internet chat room. “Maus” is the German word for “mouse” and is pronounced the same as in English; the ending character 5 instead of an ‘s’ is a form of leet.

2. He once held a contest allowing fans to design his next mouse head

Deadmau5 wearing cheese head – Flickr

Deadmau5 is well known for his giant mouse ears on stage, and in 2011 in partnership with Talenthouse he held a contest where fans designed the next gigantic faux mouse head he’ll don during gigs and promotional events.

Dozens of graphic designers and artists sent in ideas. The winner was the “cheese head,” a yellow mask with holes and indentations designed to look like Swiss cheese, with a white mouth and eyes that lit up.

He debuted the cheese ears during a performance at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom. He even went on to play his track ‘The Reward Is More Cheese’ early in the set.

3. Deadmau5 is yet to win a Grammy

Grammy Statuettes – Flickr

Amongst his major competitive achievements, Zimmerman has won five Beatport Music Awards, four DJ Awards, three International Dance Music Awards (IDMA), and three Juno Awards.

He has so far received six Grammy Award nominations to his credit, but has not won even one. Deadmau5 earned his first career GRAMMY nomination for 2008 for Best Remixed Recording for “The Longest Road (Deadmau5 Remix).”

4. The DJ incorporated lyrics from a fan’s tweet into his song “The Veldt”

The Velvet EP – Amazon

“The Veldt” is a progressive house song with a tempo of 128 beats per minute and is written in the key of A major.

The song was initially created during a 22-hour live-streaming session in March 2012. The following day, Deadmau5 found Chris James, who created his own vocal rendition of the song, via Twitter.

Deadmau5 was impressed with James’ vocals, particularly with the lyrical references to the Ray Bradbury story, and confirmed that the official release of the song would include James’ vocals.

The song ranked number 48 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 best songs of 2012.

5. Deadmau5 in a trademark Catfight with Ferrari

Deadmau5 Purrari – Flickr

Ferrari believes every car Ferrari delivers or sells is perfect as-is, thus you are not allowed to tamper (in any shape or form) with the engine, do bodywork modifications, crazy paintjobs (no pink, rose or salmon are allowed) or do anything that covers the Ferrari badge.

However, Deadmau5 modified his Ferrari 458 with a rainbow and Nyan Cat themed wrap. The super car was subsequently dubbed the “Purrari”. He then went to take his 458 on the Gumball 3000 road rally across Europe.

After the race, he put the “Purrari” up for sale on Craigslist. This resulted in Ferrari sending him a sharply worded cease and desist letter accusing him of trademark infringement.

6. Deadmau5 love of tattoos

Deadmau5 – Wikilogy

Deadmau5 has many stylish tattoos include a green robot character on his neck, hearts on his left forearm, and a scantily-clad woman on his right forearm.

His tattoos have somewhat become his life-force, both figuratively and literary, for his fame grows stronger with each ink.

Despite not being trained in the art, Deadmou5 is known to tattoo friends and fellow artists. He even personally gave Kat Von D a tattoo. Afterward, she wrote, “My new tattoo may look like a drunken third-grader did it, but I sure do love it!! Thank you, Joel.”

7. The use of Irony in his album names

Deadmau5, Random Album Title -Flickr

Deadmau5’s discography most notably comprises eight studio albums, nine compilation albums, one soundtrack album, two video albums, seven mix albums, six extended plays, 48 singles, and 18 music videos.

Either that or he has a hard time coming up with album titles. In 2008, he released a record called ‘Random Album Title.’ That was followed a year later by ‘For Lack of a Better Name.’ In 2010, he went with the confusing title ‘4×4=12,’ and two years later he released ‘>Album Title Goes Here<.

8. Deadmau5 views on Electric Dance Music

Deadmau5 LED Cube – Wikipedia

Even thou Deadmau5 remains one of the brightest EDM artist to date, he is not very found of speaking of the genre in a positive light. He is very critical of the genre.

Deadmau5 is known to declare EDM as “Event Driven Marketing” because of all the hype surrounding it.

He is also impatient with other EDM artists and laments the fact that not enough of them are visionary: “It’s interesting to see that not too many people are forward-thinking about electronic music. They’re just, ‘Do it, do it, do it.’” He adds that many people get into the genre because it’s “minimal work for maximum profit.”

In addition, he compares EDM to disco and doesn’t rule out that the whole scene will suddenly collapse.

9. He appeared on an episode of ‘Gossip Girl.’

Gossip Girl cover – Flickr

Hey Upper East Siders, let’s rewind back to 2009, when deadmau5 makes a cameo appearance as the DJ of choice for an exclusive fashion show on Gossip Girl.

The 60-second clip pieces together the DJ as he mixes away to the march of thousand-dollar dresses and heels.

He later said. “I didn’t have much of a clue at the time about what I was getting myself into, and had a laugh when they sent hair and makeup to my trailer. They looked at me with the [mouse head on] and turned straight around. All the people there were really cool. Had a long day, though — about 14 hours of shooting for probably 20 seconds of TV. Glad I don’t have to do that every day.”

10. Deadmau5 has a YouTube Chanel

Coffee Run with Tommy Lee – Youtube

Deadmau5’s YouTube Channel is called Coffee Run where he picks up coffee from Tim Horton’s and interviews celebrities such as Zedd, Pharell, Tommy Lee and Russell Peters.

Despite his renowned loud mouth that have so far waged public, twitter wars with everyone from Swedish House Mafia, Rusko, Afrojack, Kanye West, Lady Gaga to even Madonna he is actually nice to his guests.