Martin Garrix

Garrix has repeated the same origin story for over a decade, almost unchanged: an eight-year-old glued to the television as Tiësto's set opened the 2004 Athens Olympics. "It was the biggest thing," he recalls. "My mom literally pulled me in front of the TV. One day later, I ran to the CD store and I bought Parade of the Athletes, and I thought, I want to do this too." What the record actually supports is the moment and the genre, trance — not one track; the FL Studio download that followed traces to an earlier, unrelated hobby of recording his own guitar melodies.

listen: upstream & hereshare

2003

TrafficTiësto

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2013

AnimalsMartin Garrix

listen forPlay Tiësto's early trance staple "Traffic" beside Garrix's breakout "Animals": no interview ties this exact song to the Olympics broadcast, but both work the same architecture — a single filtered lead line climbing in stages, holding back and swelling again, until the track detonates into its hook. That stair-step build toward one explosive drop is the trance instinct Garrix says he absorbed watching Tiësto that night, compressed a decade later into three minutes of big-room house.

Avicii pulled Garrix onto tour as a support act during his own rise, and the two later co-wrote "Waiting for Love," released under Avicii's name with Garrix credited for production and writing. When Avicii died in 2018, Garrix's tribute was plain: "Can't really describe in words how sad I feel right now.. thank you for inspiring me and millions others." In a 2019 interview he called Bergling a close friend he "often toured with" — real mentorship and a literal co-writing credit, though no interview has Garrix naming a technique he took from Avicii's own records.

listen: upstream & hereshare

2011

LevelsAvicii

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2015

Waiting for LoveMartin Garrix

listen forSet Avicii's breakthrough "Levels" beside "Waiting for Love," the song Garrix actually helped build: both ride one bright, chord-driven motif from a hushed open to a full-room peak, trading a distorted electro-house drop for a piano-and-synth swell that lets a vocal carry the payoff. It's the clearest audible link between the two records — not because Garrix has ever pointed to it in an interview, but because it's the one place their fingerprints are literally on the same track.

Garrix names Guetta, unprompted, alongside Tiësto as a model for staying in it: "Tiësto is one of my inspirations. Same as David Guetta... if you see them onstage, they're having so much fun. It's inspirational. Twenty years from now I still wanna be doing that." Working alongside him early on left him "overwhelmed," he told Digital Spy — "especially with legends like David Guetta, he has so many hits" — before Guetta's warmth put him at ease enough to contribute ideas. No interview has Garrix naming a specific record or technique he took from Guetta's catalog.

listen: upstream & hereshare

2011

TitaniumDavid Guetta

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2016

In the Name of LoveMartin Garrix

listen forNo source ties a specific Guetta record to a specific Garrix one, so play these side by side for the shared shape rather than a documented debt: Guetta's "Titanium" and Garrix's "In the Name of Love" both let a pop vocal topline carry a big-room build's emotional weight, with the drop landing as release rather than the whole point — the crossover instinct Garrix absorbed working rooms with Guetta, even without a single song he's cited by name.