Hardwell is back in the studio, if not on stage, with ‘Being Alive

Hardwell has released ‘Being Alive’, a new single on his own label Revealed Recordings, out 4 January. The timing is the story: it lands about a month after he shocked fans by announcing he was stepping back from touring and DJing indefinitely — a decision he’d already explained, in his own words, as one where being Hardwell “24/7 leaves too little energy, love, creativity, and attention” to live a normal life. He closed out his touring career at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome, ending that final show with a tearful speech and a promise that he would return to the stage one day. What he hadn’t stepped away from, it turns out, was the studio: ‘Being Alive’ was already aired in full at Tomorrowland the previous summer, well before any of that announcement, and Robbert van de Corput — Hardwell off the stage — has evidently kept working since.

JGUAR takes the vocal, making a Revealed Recordings debut on a track built from the kind of adrenaline-pumped synth work Hardwell built his festival reputation on, melodic and heavy enough to echo ‘Apollo’, its immediate predecessor, through a run of buildups that land in the euphoric drop he’s known for. He announced it himself on Instagram: “My new single ‘Being Alive’ drops this Friday, the follow-up of ‘Apollo’.”