One of the questions most commonly asked during consultations with clients in my role as an Austin wedding DJ is, do I take requests from the audience? And if so, do I always play the songs they want to hear?
Yes, I take requests!
I believe that the single-most important skill for a DJ to have is the ability to read a room, and there is no better tool for finding out what your audience wants to hear than via requests. Guests will literally walk up and tell you what they want to hear. There’s no better way to discover what music your audience wants to dance to than to have them tell you directly what that is.
Of course, I have to be judicious when deciding which requests to play, but the same can be said about choosing tracks in general. If the crowd is getting down to ’90s hip hop, I can’t toss any rap track from the ’90s into the mix willy nilly. There are hundreds of great ’90s hip hop songs, and I have to choose the one I think is the absolute best choice at that moment. Likewise I can’t play any and all requests. Knowing which requests to play and which to ignore is part of my skill set. When a request does fit the moment and is appropriate for the event, it gets played.
Sometimes, a guest will ask me to play a great song, but it’s not the right song for that moment, or even for that event. “Stairway to Heaven” is a great song, and some will argue it’s the greatest rock song ever written, but it’s rarely appropriate for a dance floor. On the other hand, plenty of Cardi B’s songs are great for dancing, but aren’t appropriate for all groups.
I also have to keep time constraints in mind. If 15 guests have made requests, and every one of them is perfect for the moment, but I only have time to play 10 more songs before the event ends, well… sadly, at least 5 people aren’t going to hear their request.
My Advice to Other DJs
Not all DJs agree with me about requests. Many openly state that they refuse to play any requests. They’re the experts, they say, and they know best. Dancers will take what they get, and like it. Those DJs can gripe and moan about requests until they are blue in the face, but my honest opinion is that they need to look at the bigger picture. Unless you are legitimately at the star level, and people are showing up to hear whatever you decide to play, you need to put your crowd’s needs first, and that means playing requests.
You may want to be the DJ who plays nothing but awesome, obscure new songs that no one but you knows, in hopes of turning people on to your favorite bands, and having those people look up to you as their top tastemaker, but reality is seldom like that. 99.99% of party guests only want to hear “their jam.” Most of the time, you can play that jam without being told what it is, because most people’s jam is everyone else’s jam at any given time. You play the top 10 songs of the moment and you’ve got it covered. But when someone comes up to let you know that their jam is something else, your job is to play it if it’s appropriate.
Often, a group of friends have a special connection to a song, but you won’t know that until they tell you. Once you do know, it becomes a powerful weapon in your DJ arsenal, and in conjunction with your advanced crowd-reading skills, you can determine the exact right moment in which to drop that song. The result? Instant dance floor pandemonium. And isn’t that the goal? Of course it is! That’s how I take my DJ game to the next level, and you can, too!
