Hardwell Teams Up With Maddix For Instant Classic “Smash This Beat”
By mid-2017, Hardwell had established himself as one of the most consistently productive figures in big room house music. Throughout his career, he’d delivered track after track designed for festival stages and main room club environments. Earlier in his career, in January 2012, he’d released “Spaceman,” a track that had become emblematic of big room house’s potential for genuine artistry—a song that transcended the formula to create something genuinely moving. With that legacy in mind, each new Hardwell release carried the implicit question: could it reach those heights? When “Smash This Beat,” his collaboration with Maddix, arrived in July 2017, it arrived as another chapter in an ongoing narrative of Hardwell’s dominance in the big room landscape.
“Smash This Beat” stood as a quintessential Dutch big room house production. Released through Revealed Recordings, the label co-founded by Maddix, the track embodied the uncompromising aesthetic that defined the Dutch sound at its peak. Opening with a smooth yet hard-hitting bass line that persisted throughout the track, the production immediately established its aggressive identity. As the arrangement progressed, the bass rose into a more sophisticated build, layered with vocals that announced the track’s central conceit: listeners were being called to “Smash This Beat.” Once the main drop arrived, the production delivered exactly what the build had promised—a vintage big room explosion designed to trigger the exact response its title suggested.
Watch “Smash This Beat” below:
The Sophistication of Dynamic Building
“Smash This Beat” demonstrated Hardwell and Maddix’s sophisticated approach to track architecture. Rather than recycling identical builds before each drop, the producers deliberately varied their approach. After the first drop, they took listeners into a deeper, more complex build—what might be described as Frankenstein-ish in its assembly of disparate elements—that ultimately transcended into another euphoric drop. This attention to variation separated competent big room productions from genuinely engaging ones. Listeners experiencing the track live would encounter genuine progression and structural interest rather than formula repetition.
Collaborating Across Revealed
The collaboration carried label significance as well. Maddix, as a co-founder of Revealed Recordings, brought not just production skills but also label infrastructure. Rather than seeking external validation through major label releases, Hardwell and Maddix worked within their own ecosystem, suggesting confidence in the label’s prestige and Maddix’s standing within the big room community. The collaboration reinforced Revealed’s position as a premier big room house imprint while simultaneously showcasing what collaboration between established producers could yield.
Festival Replay Value and Longevity
“Smash This Beat” was built explicitly for festival contexts and DJ sets with long lifespans. The track possessed what the industry called “replay value”—the quality that made it remain compelling and effective across repeated plays in different contexts. Whether at peak time in a festival main stage or deployed as an opener in a club night, the track could serve different purposes while maintaining its impact. This longevity potential meant the track would be “creeping into sets everywhere for many years to come”—not as a one-summer hit but as an enduring part of the big room house canon.
An Instant Classic
Released on a Friday in late July 2017, “Smash This Beat” arrived during prime festival season. It carried the weight of Hardwell’s proven production pedigree, the legitimacy of Maddix’s label infrastructure, and the design of a track built to become what its reviewers immediately recognized: an instant classic. Whether it would ultimately reach the cultural impact of “Spaceman” remained unknown at the time of release, but its arrival marked another significant chapter in Hardwell’s ongoing project of defining what big room house could achieve at its most accomplished.
