FUSE TV - Controversial EDM Grammy Nominee Al Walser to Haters: "Eat It"

When the Grammy nominations for Best Dance Recording were announced in December, one name stood out among global superstars Skrillex, Swedish House Mafia, Avicii and Calvin Harris: Al Walser. While the Liechtenstein-born producer/DJ has, by his own account, "become an international entertainment expert and mogul who has produced, written, and performed in front of millions around the globe before the age of 30," few Americans had ever heard of Walser before last month. ("I Can’t Live Without You," his nominated song, had 1,000 views on YouTube before the nomination.) 

But thanks to Grammy365, a social networking site for Grammy members, Walser was able to network and promote his track, eventually securing enough votes to land inclusion into the category. After the announcement, his nomination was greeted with widespread bemusement and mockery by the music press. We spoke to Walser from Los Angeles to get his side about his unlikely nomination, his potential acceptance speech and "having attorneys on auto-pilot."

Were you surprised at the reaction to your nomination?

That’s a very open question so I don’t know how deep you want me to get into that. I was surprised to even get nominated so I’m very humbled for being a nominated artist. I wasn’t too surprised that a lot of people would look into it and be interested like, "Who is this guy?" That’s normal. But I was surprised by how fast people came to judgment and said, "Oh, it’s gotta be fraud."

If you know the way I grew up—a non-white kid in the smallest country in the world—I was used to having fingers pointed at me from an early age in so many regards. People were always looking at me weird and this is not much different. It’s just bigger and more amplified. A lot of people were very biased—and still are—but at the end of the day, that’s okay. That’s how human beings are. But I got tons of great reactions as well. If you have 100 people and 99 love it and one doesn’t, that one will unfortunately always be louder than the rest.

And even you guys, I’m on your website now, you called it a "laughably bad song". If we’re talking about the music video, whether it’s low production, you could certainly come to a conclusion on that. But if people start to judge whether a song is bad or good, you already lost the discussion because I don’t think there’s bad or good music. You ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different opinions. 

Do you have a thick skin about these kind of things?

Definitely. If you can’t take it, you can’t make it. It’s still a process and I’m still a human being and growing as I’m going but overall, I couldn’t care less. If people don’t like it, they’re not paying my bills.

You talk about being surprised, but you told Vice about your "close relationships" and "email newsletters" and "nourishment," so it seems like this was, at least in part, a planned-out campaign.

Let me ask you something: This is called the music business, right? So we have music—whether you call it good or bad. And there is a business there. And you go about the business as good as you can with the tools that you have. If I had millions of dollars to invest, my campaign would have probably been a bit different. If I don’t have the millions, my campaign is the way it is.

Work the angles that you have and as long as it’s in a legal parameter, everything goes and everything is fine. It comes down to connecting your music to the people and that’s exactly what we’ve done. But the way people ask it like, "Oh, there was a campaign. How could you? He was strategizing." You have to be kidding me. Everybody’s having a campaign.

I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to reconcile the two statements.

It’s like, "You’re not supposed to touch this club of a few artists. They’re supposed to play in their golden sandbox. You’re not supposed to interrupt them. How dare you." I don’t care. I’m in there to have my music out there. You listen to the radio and go, "How come I hear the same song over and over again? How come this person got a record deal in the first place?"

If you would continue to investigate as a journalist, you’ll come to the conclusion that there are a lot of things going on in the background, from sexual favors to corruption to money under the table. Everything goes, I guess. I wasn’t involved in this, but a lot of people were. So everybody is moving their career with the best tools they have.