Wasted

The interesting thing about Tiësto's mid-2010s pivot is how small this song is. After a career of cathedral-sized trance, he turns in something that sounds almost like a pop-rock record wearing EDM clothing: an acoustic-flavored guitar figure, a light shuffling beat, a drop that's more of a lift. Matthew Koma's vocal carries it — reedy, slightly nasal, a singer-songwriter voice rather than a diva belt, which gives the whole thing an unexpected intimacy. He sings about drinking and drifting, but with none of the triumphalism the genre usually attaches to intoxication; there's a resigned sweetness in "I like us better when we're wasted," an admission that the connection only works under the influence, and that this is both the joke and the problem. Production-wise everything is sunlit and mid-tempo, mixed for festival grounds at four in the afternoon rather than the peak-time main stage. It captures the exact moment EDM stopped being a subculture and became American radio pop, complete with Coachella-adjacent iconography. The right listening scenario is a pool party sliding into evening, or a summer drive where the destination doesn't matter — the song is about the pleasant blur, not the arrival.