Martin Garrix Leaves Big Room, Doesn’t Go Deeper
With the exception of ‘Gold Skies’ and a couple of other tracks, Martin Garrix had stuck to big room house — the defining festival sound of 2013 — throughout the early years of his career. Even in 2014, a year when deep house began to take over, Martin stuck to his big room roots. But in January 2015, a year expected to be ruled by deep house, Martin was audibly shifting away from his previous style — and notably, he was not joining the ranks of producers going deeper. Instead, Martin Garrix was moving toward a more progressive and melodic house style, and a new, then-unannounced original was the first evidence.
Titled ‘Forbidden Voices’, the track had no official release information at the time — but Garrix debuted it at Pier 36 in New York on New Year’s Eve, and featured it in the second part of his documentary series. The three-minute rip from Pier 36 can be found below, alongside part two of the documentary:
How “Forbidden Voices” Was Released
The official release came just weeks later, and in fitting fashion for a track that signaled a new chapter: on February 6, 2015, Garrix put “Forbidden Voices” out as a free download, a thank-you gift to fans for helping him reach 10 million followers on Facebook — a milestone he hit barely a year and a half after “Animals” made him a global name. A commercial release followed on iTunes that March through Spinnin’ Records, and the progressive house cut went on to chart in both the Netherlands and France.
The accompanying music video doubled down on the milestone framing, tracing Garrix’s meteoric rise — from his earliest sets as DJ Marty, through signing with Spinnin’, to the festival mainstages and private jets that “Animals” unlocked. For an instrumental track with no vocal hook, “Forbidden Voices” became a genuine fan favorite, and it has remained a recurring feature of Garrix’s live sets for years since.
The Pivot That Defined Garrix’s Career
Looking back, this moment marked one of the most consequential style shifts in modern dance music. The instinct not to chase the deep house wave — and instead to build a melodic, emotive progressive sound of his own — became the blueprint for everything that followed. Over the next two years, Garrix’s output moved decisively in this direction, from “Don’t Look Down” through the anthemic run of “Now That I’ve Found You” and “In the Name of Love.” By mid-2015 he had famously split from Spinnin’ Records in a dispute over his master rights, and in March 2016 he launched his own label, STMPD RCRDS, taking full creative control of that evolving sound.
The results speak for themselves: Garrix claimed the #1 spot in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs poll for three consecutive years starting in 2016, all on the strength of the melodic progressive identity that “Forbidden Voices” first hinted at. What sounded in January 2015 like a risky move against the trend turned out to be the young Dutchman betting on himself — and winning bigger than anyone predicted.
