Animals

"Animals" — Martin Garrix and the Track That Rewrote the Rulebook

Seventeen and Already Rewriting the Rules

Imagine being seventeen years old and releasing a track that festival crowds would be screaming back at you within months. That is more or less what happened to Martijn Garritsen, the Dutch producer who records as Martin Garrix, when "Animals" broke out of the European EDM scene in the summer of 2013 and began one of the more remarkable chart ascents in recent pop history. The story of how a teenager from Amstelveen became one of the most recognizable names in electronic dance music within a matter of months is inseparable from the story of "Animals" itself.

Garrix had been making music for years by the time "Animals" arrived, spending his formative years learning production software and submitting demos to labels. He had signed with Spinnin' Records, the Dutch electronic music powerhouse that had already developed a reputation for launching major EDM talent, and by 2013 he had built up enough experience in the studio to make something that sounded genuinely professional rather than promising. The gap between those two things is significant in dance music, where polish matters as much as inspiration.

The Making of a Festival Weapon

Released in May 2013, "Animals" was structured around a single-minded sonic logic: build tension, release it, repeat. The track deployed a climbing synth build over chopped vocal samples and hard-hitting percussion, constructing a kind of pressure cooker that demanded release. When the drop arrived, it was designed to trigger a physical response in a crowd rather than to communicate any particular emotional nuance. This was architecture, not poetry, and Garrix understood exactly what he was building.

The track was designed for festival main stages, the enormous outdoor venues where EDM had been drawing audiences of tens of thousands across Europe and, increasingly, North America. In that context, the specific engineering decisions of "Animals" made complete sense: the long build needed to work across a field the size of several football pitches, and the drop needed to hit hard enough to be felt in the chest even at the back of a crowd. Garrix had effectively built the track to exploit the acoustics and collective psychology of that specific environment.

From Europe to the Hot 100

The track's European success preceded its American breakthrough. It dominated club and festival playlists across the continent before crossing the Atlantic in force. On the Billboard Hot 100, it debuted on October 5, 2013, entering at number 86, then moving through an extended and sometimes non-linear chart run that reflected the way dance music accumulated its commercial numbers: through sustained streaming activity, digital downloads, and the kind of gradual cultural penetration that happened through social media sharing, DJ sets, and festival exposure rather than traditional radio spins.

The chart run was genuinely extraordinary for an instrumental dance track. "Animals" spent 34 weeks on the Hot 100, a duration that reflected its remarkable staying power in an environment where most singles cycled out within a few months. By the time it hit its peak of number 21 on April 26, 2014, the track had been a cultural presence for most of a year, an almost unprecedented timeline for an EDM single on the American mainstream chart.

The EDM Moment and Its Context

The success of "Animals" arrived during what the music industry had taken to calling the "EDM boom," a period stretching roughly from 2011 to 2015 when electronic dance music achieved levels of mainstream American commercial success that would have seemed implausible a decade earlier. Artists like David Guetta, Avicii, and Calvin Harris had already demonstrated that dance music could compete at the top of the pop charts, and a new generation of producers including Garrix, Hardwell, and Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike were arriving to sustain that momentum.

What distinguished "Animals" within this context was its rawness. Many of the biggest EDM crossover hits of the period achieved their pop chart success by incorporating conventional song structures, guest vocalists, and melodic hooks designed for radio. "Animals" was harder and more abrasive than most of them, and its success suggested that the American mainstream had developed an appetite for electronic music on its own terms rather than only in pop-friendly guises.

Garrix After the Breakthrough

The success of "Animals" launched Garrix into the upper tier of the global DJ world with astonishing speed. He became the youngest artist ever to reach number 1 on DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs list, an achievement that cemented his status as the most visible new talent in electronic music. His subsequent years brought collaborations with major pop artists and additional charting singles, but "Animals" remained the foundation of his reputation, the track that established both his sound and his identity in the minds of listeners worldwide.

Put it on at the right volume and let the drop tell you everything you need to know.

"Animals" — Martin Garrix's singular moment on the 2010s charts.