How does dance music sensation John Summit pregame his set at one of Las Vegas’ most popular nightclubs the Friday before the Super Bowl? Laying in bed, eating an airport sandwich.
But just because he’s horizontal doesn’t mean he’s unproductive. In fact, he’s spending his time cooking up something new that could be house music’s next smash hit — or at least a highlight of what his fans hear that night. “I try to make a new song for every set,” Summit, 29, says. “I usually make all my music just laying in bed.”
When we chat the morning of the Super Bowl, Summit has another accomplishment to tout: He just got seven hours of sleep for the first time in a long time (“Last night was my first Saturday off in years”). Although people might think he’s out living it up before his sets, he says he just lounges, makes music until 12:30 a.m., showers, changes, exports his tracks onto USBs, takes a couple of tequila shots to get the vibes right, and goes straight from his hotel room to the decks at the club.
Don’t let his young looks fool you. Summit is no stranger to Las Vegas, having recently signed on as a resident DJ at LIV nightclub’s new outpost there. It’s just one of many accomplishments for the star who has become the hottest name in dance music and whose viral hit “Where You Are” with Hayla is nearing a hundred million Spotify streams.
Summit grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and attended University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. While in college, he bartended and began DJing bars, small clubs, and fraternity parties, teaching himself how to use the equipment with YouTube tutorials. While the internet taught him his technical prowess, Chicago nightlife taught him to love house. “I went to all the after-hours spots and all the warehouses, and what they play is the underground style of house music,” he says.
Though he got a job as a certified public accountant, he eventually walked away from that career to pursue music. “I was more forced away — as in, I was definitely let go from my job,” Summit corrects me with a laugh. “It was really self-inflicted, though. I would show up late and leave early every single day, because all I cared about was making music.”
Short on industry connections (“I had zero”), Summit began sending blind emails with his music to labels, hoping one of them would respond. He says he sent more than 50 demos to the U.K. house label Defected Records before they responded and said they wanted what would become Summit’s first hit, “Deep End.”
In 2022, Summit dropped a remix of “Escape,” the hit single by Kx5 (the collaborative project from artists Deadmau5 and Kaskade) featuring vocalist Hayla. After that remix’s success, Summit connected with Hayla to make an original track. “Where You Are” hit the Top Ten on Billboard‘s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and became both Summit and Hayla’s biggest hit to date. Its influence and omnipresence in the EDM world was second to none last summer, and it became a festival mainstay.
“That was probably my most ambitious work to date at that point, and then it ended up just taking over the world a little bit,” Summit says proudly. “When it first came out, it was like Zedd, Tiësto, Hardwell, Armin Van Buuren, everyone — they all played it all Ultra weekend.”
Summit and Hayla have set out to recapture magic with their latest release together, “Shiver.” The song acts as a precursor to Summit’s debut album, which will arrive eight years after his very first musical release. Summit says the record, due out in mid-summer (perhaps before his first Madison Square Garden headlining set, which sold out in two hours), will be sonically diverse — touching on the melodic build of progressive house along with his techno house roots.
“My original sound was tech house, so there’ll be that on the album, and then I kind of got into trance-y sounds with ‘Where You Are’ and progressive sounds, so there’ll be that,” Summit says, adding that he went to London in November to work with some vocalists. “I’ve been loving drum and bass lately…which I’ve never released before.”
He’s got even loftier goals, too. “I loved Radiohead growing up, so I always wanted to make a wild song that breaks music theory a little bit in a unique way,” Summit says.
Being from Chicago, some of Summit’s biggest musical inspirations and bucket list collaborators are who you’d expect: “Chief Keef, Lil Durk, Kanye,” Summit rattles off, while discussing his cheeky tweet about bringing diss tracks to house music.
In February, Summit’s continued admiration for the artist formerly known as Kanye West caused back and forths between the musician and some Twitter users. When a few pointed out Ye’s antisemitic rhetoric and hateful comments, Summit tweeted back, “This is a fair take but I do not excuse his behavior and have clearly stated that.” Summit says he maintains a right to separate the art from the artist, acknowledging that might not work for everybody.
“For me, if you look at all the painters, the famous painters in human history, not all of them, but a lot of them were terrible people,” Summit says. “They just choose to ignore it and look at the art because at the end of the day, they did make something awesome.”
Summit says many of his detractors on the subject come from “this subculture in EDM of people who are highly political, to say the least.” In a tweet sent a few days before our conversation, Summit singles out fans of the disgraced DJ Bassnectar.
“If I speak about politics, I’m just speaking out of my ass… I think it’s very stupid when people think that artists have to have a stance on things,” Summit says. “Do I have time to read 10 hours a day about the intricacies of global events? No, I’m making music. Maybe one day.”
One thing Summit did have the time for? Ye’s new record, Vultures, which the DJ calls the best Kanye West record since The Life of Pablo.
“I think it’s a huge move going forward for him and hopefully that wave keeps running for him because it’s good to see someone get back on track in life, in my opinion,” Summit says.
For the most part, Summit finds a good balance between an online presence that helps him connect with fans and, to use his words, touching grass. He’s dished out a few successful clapbacks: When ESPN posted a clip of the star exchanging a potentially awkward moment with social media creator Alix Earle at an Inter Miami CF soccer match last summer, the two collaborated on a fun response (plus, Earle seems to be a genuine fan). Summit also won comment-section points for not letting people take $169 bottles of tequila out of his hands during sets.
“I just don’t like when people really shove their phones in my—” The usually positive Summit stops short. “[I don’t like] song requests, I hate it because it makes me feel like a jukebox…And then just girls touching me while I’m playing, I don’t really like.”
As the streams and accolades pile up, so do the people coming to see Summit in increasingly bigger venues. Summit is excited about his Madison Square Garden date, explaining that prep has already been a ton of work. “We’re starting to pioneer and push the needle forward for the genre,” he says.
As for the contemporaries he respects, Summit shouts out Fred Again.. (“he’s a true artist”) and Dom Dolla, the latter of whom Summit will perform with at Coachella as a collaborative project titled Everything Always.
“You have someone like Fred Again.. who just completely embraces culture … Doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re from, he embraces it,” Summit says. He also praises Dolla’s hitmaking abilities. “What Dom does so well, he’s an amazing songwriter and he pretty much has never put out a flop ever.”
Through an extensive tour and managing his own record label, 2024 is all about the debut album for Summit. At one point in our conversation, he describes “Shiver” as the most emotional track he’s ever made. It’s a selling point for so many stars pushing a single, but Summit takes a beat and thinks hard about what he wants to say. His brain seems to move a mile a minute even when he doesn’t say much.
“The ‘I want this forever’ line just really, really hits me because I feel like I’m at the top of the world right now and I love it so much,” Summit says after a moment. “I’m selfish in the fact that I’m like, I don’t want to let go of this.”
