"I introduced them in London at a Beats event," Interscope A&R representative Dave Rene says. "I said, 'Gaga, I want you to meet Zedd.' She just reached her arm out and touched him and said, 'Let's work together.'"
While the Interscope team won't comment on the exact nature of Zedd's work for Gaga just yet, the two artists are in active contact. Gaga is known to be working on a follow-up to last year's chart-topping Born This Way, and she's tapped the young DJ to serve as direct support for her upcoming 16-date tour of Asia, which begins April 27 in Seoul's Olympic Stadium. (Zedd also played Coachella and will hit Lollapalooza.)
Meanwhile, Zedd is collaborating with another pop titan, songwriter/producer Max Martin, and is close to finishing what Zedd calls "a definite hit" that label bosses, including Iovine, are reportedly clamoring to secure for their biggest artists. Zedd's also working on his first artist album, which he says is modeled after the narrative quality of one of his favorites, Justice's Cross, and slated for release on Interscope later this year. "I don't want to put 12 singles on an album," he says. "I want to make a story, a little movie."
"Those early remixes could be original tracks easily. They're not remixes, they're from-the-ground-up reproductions," Rene says. The songs included Diddy's "Ass on the Floor," Gaga's "Marry the Night" (which Zedd completed in just 24 hours and was selected for the Born This Way deluxe edition) and JoJo's "The Other Chick," which Rene says never saw release because it was too good. "It was so much better than the original it caused a giant rift in the camp, and the producers and writers wouldn't let us put it out."
