Deadmau5
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Joel Zimmerman, better known by his stage name deadmau5 ("DEAD mow five"), is a Canadian EDM producer and DJ. He is best known for his signature "mau5head", a helmet that conceals his true identity. Nonetheless, his notoriety is characterized by torturing his own fanbase with NFTs, as well as his years-long aptitude for posting comments that make Gordon Ramsey look like a polite and refined individual.
In 2012 a massive legal battle arose when the real identity of Joel Zimmerman was revealed to be more rodentlike than expected. After sustaining a fall, his true form was accidentally revealed, which wrought the attention of Kanye West.
But with a large collection of potential awards and some commercially successful albums, deadmau5 was widely recognized as one of the most influential and accomplished masters of repeating the same four notes for ten minutes and calling it a ‘song’ for a couple years in the 2010s. He also propelled a person more famous than him now to stardom, and is now frequently compared to a guy that has nothing to do with him.
Career[edit | edit source]
Stuart Little and everything before[edit | edit source]
Zimmerman was born in 1981 to unknown parents in a hobbyist breeder's home at a strange land called Canada. Despite the unfortunate start, it was soon apparent that he was destined for great things. As a mouse teenager, he escaped his enclosure, and began to disassemble and reassemble various electronic toys and computers to his owner's amazement. In the midst of this, young Zimmerman became fluent with the keyboard and quickly realized he had a gift for repeating the same note over and over again in old music software. His path was clear: that even as a mouse, he was to be a producer of electronic music.
Leaving his domestic life with his owners behind, Zimmerman began his new life in the music industry, enabled by building a realistic humanoid robot suit to pilot and hiding his true self underneath a massive mouse helmet. After cycling through several other handles, he settled on operating under the moniker ‘deadmau5’, a name that paid tribute to his childhood friend, a mouse named Stuart Little, who was tragically killed via electrocution repairing wires inside his computer for him.
BSOD and fame[edit | edit source]
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One of deadmau5’s forming breaks of his career was when he met Steve Duda, another techno “composer” with a penchant for developing things that make music, and not music. Initially shocked by deadmau5's true identity, Duda swore to secrecy after being convinced of deadmau5's technological prowess and continued aspiring to be the next Aphex Twin with him. However, they accidently formed the commercially successful duo "BSOD", leading to them being appealing to pretentious music listeners the aisle over instead. While most of their songs were permanently relegated to die-hard fans, one particular single – a parodical song entitled "This Is The Hook" – was an instant success, despite the fact that its lyrics were taking the piss out of the very house-listeners who liked it. Don't tell Benny Benassi.
Eventually, Duda realized that he was meant for more than four bar loops, and split from BSOD, occasionally reuniting with deadmau5 whenever he decides another four bar loop fix wouldn't be so bad. Around that time, Zimmerman released his first studio album, Get Scraped. Get Scraped has since been promptly scraped from the internet. The album was followed by Vexillology, an album deadmau5 apparently knew would appeal only to future hardcore fans. After two years of arguing with a Care Bear who manages his former label, his major breakthrough came with the release of his specifically-titled third album, Random Album Title (2006). While mostly consisting of four bar loops, Random Album Title also contained a collaboration with fellow electronic producer Kaskade, called "I Remember". Special for being a four bar loop with vocals, it catapulted deadmau5 into fame, all while his true identity was unknown to but a few in a small inner circle.
Mau5 revealed[edit | edit source]
deadmau5 was now coming close to his peak. A year following Random Album Title, after an intense period of work (in which he primarily thought up new names for songs he had already written), he released his next album, For Lack of a Better Name, and then 4x4=12 in 2010, both of which the masses soaked up, unquestioning towards his massive helmet he never took off. deadmau5's rise to prominence was further supported by live performances, including a live set at the 54th Grammy Awards, and another at Foot Locker. In 2012, he endured a notable interview with the Rolling Stone magazine, placing him as the first electronic artist to adorn the magazine's cover, and the first to break the magazine’s record of ‘most people insulted in one interview’. By this point, deadmau5 had now risen to the top ranks of the world's electronic musicians, an honor endowed to only the best four bar loop producers, all while the world was still naive to his real identity.
In 2012 deadmau5 released > Album Title Goes Here <, and the album met a number six place on the Billboard 200, a number one place on the Dance/Electronic Albums chart, a nomination for Best Dance/Electronica Album for the 55th Grammy Awards, and thousands of trash folders, managing to retain deadmau5's spot as one of the most successful figures in his field of music: four bar loops.
But during his 2012 live performance at Buc-ee's, deadmau5 tripped and fell down backwards from his massive Cube stage, and rose from behind completely headless, his mau5head removed, revealing his true form: a small brown mouse. Realizing his error, deadmau5 attempted to place the helmet back on in vain, but eventually relented and resumed playing the show with no helmet at all. The crowd looked in awe as he went on performing, and eventually animal control arrived, placing deadmau5 in custody at a local municipal animal shelter.
Legal battle[edit | edit source]
deadmau5, at this point, had accrued a net worth that was nothing the law could scoff at. Having demonstrated decades of impressive technological feats beforehand, and proving he had an IQ besting even Bill Nye, deadmau5 was expected to be quickly freed from his newfound metal cage. However, Kanye West, former current former current neo‑Nazi racist, sued deadmau5, arguing that as a mouse, he was not eligible for the same legal protections humans possessed. On Twitter, Kanye expressed that his real intentions were to buy deadmau5 from the breeder in Canada so he could be his personal producer.
deadmau5 feared ever having to work with Kanye, and devised his own plan. deadmau5 had established a strong network of contacts by this point, and he knew that he was only one of the several animal pilots in the area. Using his robust network, he was able to discover that Kanye West's lawyer, Charlie Kirk, was actually a gerbil. Presenting the evidence to the court the next year, Kirk attempted to flee the courtroom but was shortly apprehended and was outed in the courtroom. In the end, Kanye and Kirk were ordered to pay deadmau5's legal fees, and all parties remained free.
Everything after[edit | edit source]
After the years-long legal battle, deadmau5's victory did not initially assure him any lack of controversy. The media extensively covered the incidents around the legal battle, and many other celebrities and world leaders expressed concern that some of their own could be small animals. However, deadmau5's own fans came to embrace his true identity, figuring that this was the ultimate realization of his troll persona, being an actual mouse after all. deadmau5 himself would too come to embrace himself, sometimes ditching the mau5head so he could breathe easier. Rather than the mau5head being a helmet at his point, it was a literal cage he had lived in for just around a decade.
Riding on the increased publicity, deadmau5 went on to continue releasing albums, releasing While(1<2), (which is probably the most confusing name yet) in 2014. The album was probably the album closest to being as edgy as he had hoped he'd be in 2005. The only song off of it I'm capable of naming at the moment is my pet sealacinth coelacanth, which is a song that Joel yells "F***" in over and over again. This album also brought accusations that he was a satanist since he had named several tracks after the seven deadly sins. These were accusations he gleefully confirmed.
deadmau5's other other album, called W:/2016Album/, (NEVERMIND, THIS IS THE MOST CONFUSING) was released in 2016, and even deadmau5 hated this one. Accused of simply making a file in his computer an album, he also confirmed this. To be fair though, most fans do look at this album with more favorability than Vexillology.
After years of peddling NFTs during a rather insane period of time, deadmau5 finally regained his conscious as the revolutionary firebrand he was born to be, and has started hyping up a 2026 album while admonishing AI and righting past wrongs. The four bar loops of this album and the new insults of this era have been lauded by fans as a return to form.
Live sets[edit | edit source]
deadmau5 often showcases his music live. He doesn't like to be called a "DJ", however, and argues that his sets are closer to live performances, as "there are no CDs involved", and he "assembles tracks on the fly using cutting-edge computer technology", and that DJs "are fucking cunts, while I fucking am not".
While achieving crowds numbered in the gazillions (give or take a bazillion), deadmau5's performances have also had their critics. Some have complained that the sets are repetitive and uncreative, and that the only difference between each one is the order of the songs, and what patterns the strobe lights are flashed in time with the four bar loops. This is obviously a ridiculous charge- deadmau5 also wears a fan's mau5head every performance, and rotates the Cube every now and than!
Controversial comments[edit | edit source]
On DJs[edit | edit source]
deadmau5 is well-known for being mildly critical of DJs in general, and has made quite a number of polite and constructive comments towards them. By which we mean he yells a bunch profanities at them.
- "It puts me to fucking sleep, to be quite honest; I don't really see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together and it bores me to fucking tears and hopefully, with all due respect to the DJ type that will go the way of the fucking dinosaur, I'd like the cunts to dis-a-fucking-ppear! And to further elaborate on my point: fuck fucked cunt fuck fucking fuck fuck bitch fuck fucker. Fuckity fuck.
- No offence, though."
Fortunately, deadmau5 fell back on his comments later that year, explaining that the interview had been a bad one and that he hadn’t expressed his views on DJs correctly:
- "Yeah, I probably needed a couple more fucks in there to get the message just right."
On other artists[edit | edit source]
deadmau5 has also expressed similar opinions towards other electronic artists. In a 2012 interview for the Rolling Stone he stated:
- "David Guetta has two iPods and his fucking Spotify mixer and he just plays tracks – like, 'Here's one with Akon, check it out!' Even Skrillex isn't doing anything too technical. He has a fucking Chromebook and BandLab open, and he's just playing his shit ... People are, thank fucking God, smartening up about who does what – but there's still button-pushers getting paid half a million. And not to say I'm not a button-pusher. I'm just pushing a lot more buttons. Usually two... sometimes even three!
- Also, did I mention that DJs are fucking cunts? Well, they are. Fucking fuck fuck cunt fuckers."
Video game appearances[edit | edit source]
At the beginning of his career, young deadmau5 sought a disguise to pursue his career as a DJ, and settled on using a Mickey Mouse mascot head his very own 3D-modelled mau5head. Little did he know (but very much did he intend), it would become one of the most lucrative pieces of musical iconography of all time. So lucrative, that it can be found in nearly every single video game ever made. Let me give you an obligatory list, as well as an understanding here.
The mau5head has appeared in:
- Pong, and deadmau5 cameoed in Pong! the Movie
- Batman: Arkham Knight
- Grand Theft Auto: Bikini Bottom Stories
- Fortnite and its successive sequels
- Goat Simulator
- Mario Kart 8 (pictured)
- Polybius
- Diablo III
- Among Us
And many, many more.
Critical reception[edit | edit source]
deadmau5's music is mostly positively received, achieving praise for its universal appeal, and its fusion of house style with other little sounds. Its critics are numerous, however, and many have complained that deadmau5's art is "repetitive", "uncreative", and "just the same four notes over and over for ten minutes". These complaints are seriously flawed, even bordering on ridiculousness. deadmau5's music isn't "uncreative"; it has its own unique style, and it's not "repetitive"; it just has a beautiful simplicity. And finally, it's not "just the same four notes over and over for ten minutes"; usually it has a drumbeat in there as well ... maybe someone is singing ...
