Review - David Guetta - Nothing But The Beat 2.0

The monster that is David Guetta’s ‘Nothing But The Beat’ rolls on as he re-releases the album with seven new songs. Remember – the original album had two discs, one with all the songs we know (twelve songs featuring other singers) and a second disc with ten instrumental EDM songs. If you bought the deluxe edition (no, the two-disc version was not the deluxe – it was the standard), you were lucky enough to get a third disc that featured some extended remixes as well (ten in all). Three discs in a deluxe edition? Surely that can’t be topped.

Well, guess what. Now there is a ‘Nothing But The Beat 2.0’, which cuts up the original and meshes the singles (all six of them) with seven new songs. Instead of releasing a new album, or even just a four-disc option, ‘Nothing But The Beat 2.0’ is an album unto itself, cutting out a lot of what was on the original and mixing the two original CDs and throwing in a number of new tracks. At 23 songs long, you’d think this is starting to get a bit silly, and it is. This plan doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but whatever makes D. Guetta happy I guess.

Not everything on ‘2.0’ is actually “new”. “Wild Ones Two” is a remix of Flo Rida’s Sia-assisted single, and a collab with Nicky Romero (who is also on “Metropolis”, a holdover from the original release) and “Jack Black”. “She Wolf (ft. Sia)” was released last month, and is the first official single off the re-release. The song is either going to get pushed back or won’t get it’s due, as the sixth single from the original – the Chris Brown and Lil Wayne-featuring “I Can Only Imagine” – is just now taking off. If “She Wolf” gets overlooked, I’m going to be severely disappointed.

Guetta has never been an innovator, and ‘2.0’ is a mix of more of the same and new trends in dance music. Songs like “Play Hard (ft. Ne-Yo and Akon)” are nothing new or special, but this is a re-release you remember. The French DJ brings Sia back and enlists indie darlings Tegan and Sara (who were introduced to dance music earlier by Morgan Page), following the new idea that it shouldn’t just be pop singers who get to join the party. He even has someone named Taped Rei on “Just One Last Time”. No idea who that is, but he sounds like the lead singer of some indie pop/rock venture.

A likely second single is “Every Chance We Get We Run (ft. Tegan and Sara)”, a co-production with Swedish House Mafia member Alesso. If we ever actually get there I mean. By the time it would be alright to release that as a single, Guetta will probably already have another album ready. This guy just does not stop.

Listen to: “Just One Last Time (ft. Taped Rei)”, “Every Chance We Get We Run (ft. Tegan and Sara)”, “She Wolf (ft. Sia)”, “What The Fuck”