David Guetta & Afrojack Gets Mixed Up With Sia In ‘Helium’
This little tune will put a smile on your face and a rhythm through your body. In ‘Helium’ where Afrojack & David Guetta go up against the gorgeous lyrics of Sia, both powerful vocals and fun productions are highlighted. The mashup of sorts rightfully puts Sia in the limelight. The artists voice is powerful and immediately captures your attention upon listening.
Afrojack and David Guetta on the other hand allow their production to take a more subtle role for the first half of the tune, still their beat slowly builds and the track ends with a euphoric break down that is near perfect. Overall this is a great example of how to mix pop and EDM, not to heavy on either side of the fence, while still demonstrating the best of both worlds.
Officially credited as “Helium (Sia vs. David Guetta & Afrojack),” this version dropped on January 25th, 2018, as a standalone dance remix of a song that had already had a life of its own for a few months at that point. The original “Helium” was written by Sia with producer Chris Braide for the soundtrack to Fifty Shades Darker, the 2017 film adaptation, with Oliver Kraus also credited on the production. So by the time Afrojack and Guetta got their hands on it roughly four months after the soundtrack release, “Helium” was already a proven vocal showcase — which probably explains why the rework leans so heavily on keeping Sia’s performance front and center instead of burying it under a wall of drops.
That restraint is really what makes the Afrojack and Guetta version work. Rather than turning “Helium” into a big-room festival weapon from the jump, the two producers ease into it, letting the tension build gradually before finally letting the arrangement open up into that euphoric back half. It’s a pretty smart pairing on paper too — Guetta had already built a career-defining run of pop vocalist collaborations by this point, from Sia herself on earlier records to a long list of other crossover hits, while Afrojack brought the kind of festival-tested low end that could give the drop some real weight without overwhelming the vocal. The result lands right in that pop-meets-EDM pocket both artists have spent years perfecting, and it’s a good example of why remix culture around big vocal records rarely goes out of style — a great vocal performance like Sia’s on “Helium” can support a lot of different interpretations, and this one happens to hit a nice balance between radio-friendly and festival-ready.
