John Summit plays Dance Music's greatest hits in bed

How she dances Music sensation John Summit performed his set at one of Las Vegas' most popular nightclubs on the Friday before the Super Bowl? Lying in bed, eating an airport sandwich.

But just because it's horizontal doesn't mean it's counterproductive. In fact, he spends his time cooking up something new that could be house music's next big hit — or at least a highlight of what his fans hear that night. “I try to do a new song for every set,” Summit, 29, says. “I usually make all my music lying in bed.”

When we talk Super Bowl morning, Summit has another accomplishment to tout: He just got seven hours of sleep for the first time in a long time (“Last night was my first Saturday off in years”). While people might think he doesn't live it up before his sets, he says he just chills, makes music until 12:30am, showers, changes, USBs his tracks, takes a few shots tequila to get the vibes right and goes straight from his hotel room to the club decks.

Don't let his youthful looks fool you. Summit is no stranger to Las Vegas, having recently signed on as a resident DJ at the new LIV nightclub outpost there. It's just one of many accomplishments for the star who has become the hottest name in dance music and whose viral hit “Where You Are” with Hayla is approaching one hundred million Spotify streams.

Summit grew up in the Chicago suburbs and attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. While in college, he bartended and began DJing bars, small clubs, and frat parties, teaching himself how to use the equipment with YouTube tutorials. While the Internet taught him his technical prowess, Chicago's nightlife taught him to love home. “I went to all the after-hours spots and all the warehouses, and what they're playing is the underground style of house music,” he says.

Although he got a job as a chartered accountant, he eventually left that career to pursue music. “I was more forced away — as in, they definitely let me out of my job,” Summit corrects me with a laugh. “It was really self-inflicted, though. I showed up late and left early every day, because all I cared about was making music.”

Short on industry connections (“I had zero”), Summit began blindly emailing his music to record companies, hoping one of them would respond. He says he sent more than 50 demos to UK label Defected Records before they wrote back and said they wanted what would become Summit's first hit, “Deep End”.

In 2022, Summit released a remix of “Escape”, the hit single by Kx5 (the collaboration of artists Deadmau5 and Kaskade) featuring singer Hayla. After the success of this remix, Summit linked up with Hayla to make an original track. “Where You Are” reached the Top Ten Advertising sign's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and became both Summit and Hayla's biggest hit to date. His influence and omnipresence in the world of EDM was unparalleled last summer and he became a mainstay of the festival.

“That was probably my most ambitious work to date at that point, and then it ended up taking over the world a little bit,” Summit says proudly. “When it first came out, it was like Zedd, Tiësto, Hardwell, Armin Van Buuren, everybody – everybody played it the whole Ultra weekend.”

Summit and Hayla have set out to recapture the magic with their latest release, “Shiver.” The song serves as a precursor to Summit's debut album, which will arrive eight years after his first music release. Summit says the record, due for release in mid-summer (perhaps before his first headlining set at Madison Square Garden, which sold out in two hours), will be sonically different – touching on the melodic construction of progressive house together with the roots of techno house.

“My original sound was tech house, so that's going to be on the album, and then I started getting more trance-y sounds with 'Where You Are' and the progressive sounds, so that's going to be there,” Summit says, adding that went to London in November to work with some singers. “Lately I've been into drum and bass… which I've never released before.”

He also has higher goals. “I loved Radiohead growing up, so I always wanted to do a wild song that kind of breaks music theory in a unique way,” says Summit.

Being from Chicago, some of Summit's biggest musical inspirations and bucket list collaborators are who you'd expect: “Chief Keef, Lil Durk, Kanye,” Summit rattles off while discussing his cheekiness. tweet for bringing diss tracks to house music.

In February, Summit's continued admiration for the artist formerly known as Kanye West sparked a back-and-forth between the musician and some Twitter users. When some pointed out Ye's anti-Semitic rhetoric and hateful comments, Summit responded on Twitter: “That's a fair point, but I don't condone his behavior and I've made that clear.” Summit says it reserves the right to separate the art from the artist, acknowledging that this may not work for everyone.

“To me, if you look at all the painters, the famous painters in human history, not all of them, but a lot of them were terrible people,” Summit says. “They just choose to ignore it and look at the art because at the end of the day they made something awesome.”

Summit says many of his critics on the subject come from “this subculture in EDM of people who are highly political, to say the least.” In a tweet sent a few days before our chat, Summit singles out fans of debauched DJ Bassnectar.

“If I'm talking about politics, I'm just talking out of my ass… I think it's pretty stupid when people think that artists have to have an attitude about things,” says Summit. “Do I have time to read 10 hours a day about the intricacies of world events? No, I make music. Maybe one day.”

One thing Summit had time for? Ye's new record, Vultureswhich the DJ calls Kanye West's best record yet The Life of Pablo.

“I think it's a huge step forward for him and I hope that wave continues to run for him because it's good to see someone come back to life, in my opinion,” Summit says.

For the most part, Summit strikes a good balance between an online presence that helps him connect with his fans and, to use his own words, touching grass. He has done some successful clapbacks: When ESPN posted a clip star sharing a potentially awkward moment with social media mogul Alix Earle at an Inter Miami CF soccer match last summer, the two collaborated on a fun answer (plus, Earle seems to be a genuine fan). Summit also won comments section points why he wouldn't let people take $169 bottles of tequila out of his hands during sets.

“I just don't like it when people actually put their phones in me—” The usually positive Summit pauses. “[I don’t like] he asks for songs, I hate it because it makes me feel like a jukebox… And then just girls touching me while I'm playing, I don't really like it.”

As the streams and accolades pile up, so do the people who come to see Summit in bigger and bigger venues. Summit is excited about his date at Madison Square Garden, explaining that the preparation is already a lot of work. “We're starting to pioneer and push the needle forward for the genre,” he says.

As for contemporaries he respects, Summit shouts out Fred Again.. (“he's a real artist”) and Dom Dolla, the latter of whom Summit will be performing with at Coachella as a collective called Everything Always.

“You have someone like Fred Again… who just totally embraces the culture… It doesn't matter what walk of life you're from, he embraces it,” says Summit. He also praises Dolla's hit making abilities. “What Dom does so well is he's an amazing songwriter and he almost never fails.”

Through extensive touring and managing his own record label, 2024 is all about the debut album for Summit. At one point in our conversation, he describes “Shiver” as the most emotional track he's ever made. It's a selling point for so many stars pushing a single, but Summit takes a beat and thinks a lot about what he wants to say. His brain seems to be moving a mile a minute even when he isn't saying much.

“The line, 'I want this forever,' really hits me, because I feel like I'm on top of the world right now, and I love it so much,” Summit says after a moment. “I'm selfish in that I'm like, I don't want to let this go.”