Background and career
Pierre David Guetta (French: [pjɛʁ david ɡeta]; born 7 November 1967) is a French DJ and record producer. He has sold over 10 million albums and 65 million singles globally, with more than 40 billion streams on Spotify. Guetta was voted the number one DJ in the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs polls in 2011, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2025, and 2026. In 2013, Billboard ranked his song "When Love Takes Over" (featuring Kelly Rowland) as the number one dance-pop collaboration of all time. He released his debut album, Just a Little More Love, in 2002. Later, he released Guetta Blaster (2004) and Pop Life (2007). Guetta achieved mainstream success with his fourth album One Love (2009), which included his breakthrough singles "When Love Takes Over" (featuring Kelly Rowland), "Gettin' Over You" (with Chris Willis featuring Fergie and LMFAO), "Sexy Bitch" (featuring Akon) and "Memories" (featuring Kid Cudi); the former three reached number one in the United Kingdom. His fifth album, Nothing but the Beat (2011), was met with continued success, containing the hit singles "Where Them Girls At" (featuring Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj), "Little Bad Girl" (featuring Taio Cruz and Ludacris), "Without You" (featuring Usher), "Titanium" (featuring Sia) and "Turn Me On" (featuring Nicki Minaj). In 2018, he released his seventh album 7, which included twelve tracks under his alias Jack Back. In 2019, he announced his creation of the EDM subgenre "future rave" along with fellow producer Morten Breum; they released a collaborative extended play, New Rave in July 2020. In 2022, he released the single "I'm Good (Blue)" (with Bebe Rexha), which remains the third longest-running chart-topping song on the US Dance/Electronic chart. Guetta's accolades include two Grammy Awards, an American Music Award, six Electronic Dance Music Awards and a Billboard Music Award. In June 2021, he sold his recorded music catalogue for US$100 to US$150 million.
Guetta was born and was raised in Paris. His father, Pierre, was a sociologist who was born in a Moroccan Jewish family from Tétouan. His mother, Monique, was of Belgian descent. Through his father, Guetta is the younger half-brother of the prominent French politician and journalist Bernard Guetta and French-Italian actress Nathalie Guetta. He also has a half-brother, Dominique Vidal and a half-sister, Joëlle Vidal from his mother's first marriage to French cybernetician Jacques Vidal. David Guetta began his music career as a disc jockey in Parisian nightclubs. At the same time, he read economics and social policy at the Paris Nanterre University.
Guetta began to DJ at the Broad Club in Paris. He first played popular songs, and he discovered house music when he heard a Farley "Jackmaster" Funk track on French radio in 1987. The next year, he began hosting his own club nights. In 1990, he released "Nation Rap", a hip-hop collaboration with the French rapper Sidney Duteil. In the mid-1990s, Guetta played in clubs including Le Centrale, the Rex, Le Boy, and Folies Pigalle. Released in 1994 Guetta's second single, a collaboration with American house vocalist Robert Owens titled "Up & Away", was a minor club hit. In 1994, Guetta became the manager of Le Palace nightclub and he continued to organise parties there and in other clubs, such as the "Scream" parties in Les Bains-Douches.
In 2001, Guetta and Joachim Garraud founded Gum Productions, and in the same year Guetta's first hit single, "Just a Little More Love", featuring American singer Chris Willis was released. Willis was vacationing in France when he met Guetta. Guetta's debut album Just a Little More Love was released in 2002 on Virgin Records and sold over 300,000 copies. The follow-up singles, ("Love Don't Let Me Go", "People Come People Go" and "Give Me Something"), were released in 2002. Guetta released a compilation, F*ck Me I'm Famous, in 2003, named after his party in Ibiza. It included "Just for One Day (Heroes)", a remix of David Bowie's song "Heroes". Later in his career, Guetta continued recording compilations under that title. Along with Garraud, Guetta remixed Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's 1980 hit "Enola Gay" for The OMD Singles (2003).
Guetta's second album, Guetta Blaster, was released in 2004. It was supported with the release of four singles: "Money" and "Stay" featuring Chris Willis and "The World Is Mine" and "In Love With Myself" featuring JD Davis. In 2006 the Just a Little More Love single "Love Don't Let Me Go" was re-released as a mash-up with the Tocadisco remix of "Walking Away" by The Egg. The mash-up single entitled "Love Don't Let Me Go (Walking Away)" was charted higher than the original release of the song.
In 2007, Guetta's third album Pop Life was released. The album was successful in the UK and Ireland as well as in mainland Europe. According to EMI in 2010, the album has sold a total of 530,000 copies worldwide. The lead single "Love Is Gone" reached Number 1 on the American Dance Chart and charted on the Billboard Hot 100. "Delirious" featured the vocals of Tara McDonald who also co wrote the record. The song was released as the album's fourth single on 31 January 2008. The song charted No. 27 Austrian singles chart, No. 17 Belgian (Flanders) chart, No. 2 Belgian (Wallonia) singles chart. No. 12 Dutch singles chart, No. 16 French singles chart, No. 16 Swiss singles chart, No. 36 Hungary singles chart, No. 29 Romanian singles chart, No. 51 Swedish singles chart. The remixes of the song, including mixes by Fred Rister, Marc Mysterio, Laidback Luke, and Arno Cost and Norman Doray were released. A video clip for the song was filmed by Denys Thibaut in Montreal, featuring Guetta and Tara McDonald, picturing an executive assistant throwing paint all over her boss's office. McDonald also sang and co wrote "You're Not Alone" from this album. He has played in many countries around the world to promote the album. He played in Mauritius in January 2008, accompanied by French rapper JoeyStarr. In the same year, he and his wife Cathy also planned a new event which took place in the Stade de France on 5 July 2008. The event was called "UNIGHTED", he performed with Tiësto, Carl Cox, Joachim Garraud and Martin Solveig in front of a crowd of 40,000. In 2009, he was placed third in the "Top 100 DJs" poll by DJ Magazine, and was elected "Best House DJ" by DJ Awards in 2008. Since April 2009, Guetta had his own radio show on the internet radio station RauteMusik on Saturday evening. The show was afterwards moved into Radio 538, being aired every Friday evening after Tiësto's Club Life.
