Axwell /\ Ingrosso caused a stir when they were quoted by The New York Times saying the unthinkable—bashing dance music's underground scene. In an interview that followed the tired duo in New York on a hectic day filled with fan events, label meetings and eventually a show at Terminal 5 that sold out in 9 seconds, Axwell was apparently misquoted saying "Underground dance music—in the nicest way possible—it's amateur."
After getting lambasted by blogs and fans, they decided to break their silence and clarify what the meant as those comments seem a little far-fetched for someone who came from the small clubs and beat-driven underground at one point. The pair embodied dance music's transformation from a club sound, to something that can fill arenas with Swedish House Mafia, but they are smarter than that to slip a quote that would cause such a PR nightmare into an interview.
Axwell clarified in a Twitter post that they were merely answering a question about the evolution of their music and labeled their first songs as "amateur." See part of his response below and read the full response here.
"We were merely answering the question—so what do you guys think of all the underground people bashing people like yourself for moving into the mainstream as opposed to our early music...which we answered from our standpoint—ie. underground music if that's what people label our early releases as—for us—was our amateur stage—amateur the way we translate it from English to Swedish means when we were trying things out, as a hobby, a lovely hobby, a happy time, after a while we started moving into mainstream more as our music came more successful—or perhaps the mainstream crowd got to our music—which i guess took it from the underground to mainstream. And we were clear to say that if people liked our music great, and if they didn't, that ok. This was about our own releases, not other genres as a whole or other artists. We had nothing bad to say about anyone, this is a super happy time for us right now."
