I specialise in alternative weddings.
Rock, metal, emo, pop-punk, indie, punk, nu-metal – that’s the musical world I came from, and a big part of the reason couples book me in the first place.
But here’s a question I think some couples understandably have when they find my website:
“We love alternative music… but we also like Pitbull. And Taio Cruz. And Rihanna. Are you actually going to be OK with that?”
Yes.
And Becky and Brad’s wedding at Ponden Mill Weddings near Haworth was a particularly good example of why.
Their wedding went from Normandie to Black Lace, Dizzee Rascal to Nothing But Thieves, Pitbull to Linkin Park, James Brown to Fall Out Boy – and eventually finished with Flo Rida.
Not because I’d decided in advance that this was an impressively eclectic list of genres to cram into four hours.
It happened because different music did different jobs at different points in the night.
And that’s the real trick to building a mixed genre wedding playlist.
A mixed genre wedding playlist doesn’t mean playing everything
There’s an important distinction here.
Being open to different genres doesn’t mean I arrive at your wedding determined to demonstrate that I own Now That’s What I Call Everything Ever Recorded.
Becky and Brad actually had some pretty firm boundaries.
They weren’t looking for the standard ABBA/Queen/Wham/Sweet Caroline wedding experience. Mr Brightside wasn’t required to report for duty. They weren’t particularly interested in filling the night with classic rock, Motown or current chart pop either.
What they did like covered quite a lot of ground.
There was modern alternative music such as Normandie and Nothing But Thieves. Emo and pop-punk. Indie. Nu-metal. Viagra Boys. Royal Blood. DON BROCO. Paramore. Linkin Park.
And then there was Pitbull.
Usher.
Taio Cruz.
Rihanna.
Gwen Stefani.
And, because apparently we hadn’t made the brief interesting enough already, they wanted the beginning of the evening to resemble a slightly unhinged British caravan park disco.
This is why my planning process isn’t simply a matter of asking couples for twenty favourite songs. My wedding DJ planning process is designed to establish the boundaries of the night as well as the favourites: the must-plays, hard no’s, memories, guilty pleasures, guest knowledge and how much freedom I’ve got once I’m actually standing in front of the dancefloor.
The result isn’t a rigid playlist.
It’s a map.
First dance: Normandie. Second dance: Mambo No. 5.
I think this tells you quite a lot about Becky and Brad.
Their first dance was Ritual – Normandie.
If you’ve never heard it, you can hear Normandie’s official video for Ritual. It’s a great example of why an alternative first dance doesn’t need to be an acoustic cover of something everyone already knows.
And what followed this sincere, personal alternative first dance?
Mambo No. 5 – Lou Bega.
Naturally.
Then Cotton Eye Joe. The Ketchup Song. Livin’ La Vida Loca. It’s Raining Men. Superman. YMCA. Tragedy.
Becky and Brad had specifically asked for what they called “Caravan Park Classics” at the beginning of the night.
It was silly on purpose.
That’s an important distinction.
There’s a world of difference between a DJ imposing cheesy wedding music on a couple who hate it and a couple gleefully asking me to weaponise Black Lace because that’s exactly their sense of humour.
Their musical identity wasn’t simply “alternative”.
It was theirs.
And then the mixed genre wedding playlist changed gear
After the caravan park had metaphorically packed away its awning, things started moving.
Electric Six.
Hot Chip.
Then Dance Wiv Me – Dizzee Rascal feat. Calvin Harris & Chrome.
The Way I Are – Timbaland.
Dynamite – Taio Cruz.
DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love – Usher feat. Pitbull.
Don’t Stop the Music – Rihanna.
The Sweet Escape – Gwen Stefani feat. Akon.
This is where the wedding became particularly interesting for me personally.
I’m not going to pretend I spend my free time listening to Pitbull.
I don’t.
I know alternative music at a level I simply don’t know every other musical genre, because nobody is genuinely an expert in everything.
What I do understand is what music is doing to a room.
And on this particular dancefloor, Dynamite – Taio Cruz absolutely went off.
The run worked.
When Don’t Stop the Music – Rihanna came on, Becky grabbed one of her guests and danced with her in the middle of a busy dancefloor.
That’s the bit that matters. This wasn’t me deciding that an alternative wedding ought to have some mainstream music thrown in for everyone else. Becky was right in the middle of it.
This music was part of their night too.
And I could see, in real time, that this particular flavour of millennial pop, R&B and dance crossover was connecting different parts of the room.
So I followed it.
Being an alternative wedding DJ isn’t a loyalty test
This is perhaps the bit I most want couples to understand.
Being an alternative wedding DJ doesn’t mean I consider it a personal defeat if Rihanna gets a bigger reaction than Queens of the Stone Age.
I’m not there to win an argument about music.
I’m there to DJ your wedding.
Alternative music is my specialism. It means you don’t have to explain to me that Bring Me The Horizon and Bring Me The Horizon aren’t necessarily the same proposition depending on which era you’re talking about. I understand why a Fall Out Boy song you screamed along to when you were seventeen might matter more than an objectively bigger wedding hit.
But expertise shouldn’t become a musical cage.
That’s why the wording on my current wedding DJ service page is “specialist, never snobbish”. Your taste is the centre of gravity; the bridges between musical worlds are part of the job too.
Then the indie worked. Until it didn’t quite work as well.
After the mainstream crossover section, I moved through Busted and Wheatus and into an indie run:
I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor – Arctic Monkeys.
Let’s Dance to Joy Division – The Wombats.
Naïve – The Kooks.
What You Know – Two Door Cinema Club.
Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand.
Feel Good Inc. – Gorillaz.
There were some brilliant reactions in there. At one point during Naïve, two guests jokingly complained that I needed to play a rubbish song so they could finally leave the dancefloor and get to the bar.
I’ll take that review.
But eventually the indie started to plateau.
And this is exactly where a DJ can get into trouble if they’re thinking:
“The couple like indie. Therefore I must continue playing indie.”
The brief isn’t a script.
As I explain in more detail in How I Work, a fixed playlist can only describe the party everybody imagined beforehand. On the night, I’m dealing with the party that’s actually happening.
So we moved again.
Sometimes the answer isn’t a bigger song. It’s a different feeling.
Later, food arriving interrupted the momentum as well.
That’s completely normal at weddings. People eat. They go to the bar. They disappear outside. They find somebody they haven’t spoken to since 2018 and apparently need to resolve that immediately.
You can’t bully a room back onto the dancefloor by repeatedly throwing increasingly enormous songs at it.
After ELO and Tom Misch, Lady (Hear Me Tonight) – Modjo started drawing people back.
Then Groovejet – Spiller.
Then Everybody Talks – Neon Trees.
The answer wasn’t “more indie”.
It wasn’t “more alternative”.
It wasn’t even “play the biggest banger available”.
The room needed groove.
That’s a distinction I’ve become increasingly interested in as a DJ. Songs don’t only belong to genres. They perform functions.
Some songs gather people.
Some release tension.
Some make everyone scream.
Some give people permission to be silly.
Some reconnect a dancefloor after an interruption.
That’s one reason I’ve previously written about how to choose wedding music for you and your guests. The interesting bit isn’t choosing between “your music” and “their music”. It’s working out where the overlap lives – and how to move in and out of it without the wedding losing its personality.
Then it was time to get heavier
Eventually the alternative side of Becky and Brad’s wedding got considerably louder.
DON BROCO.
Viagra Boys.
Fontaines D.C.
Queens of the Stone Age.
And then:
I Believe In A Thing Called Love – The Darkness
Bring Me To Life – Evanescence
Faint – Linkin Park
Burn It To The Ground – Nickelback
Misery Business – Paramore
Dear Maria, Count Me In – All Time Low
Dance, Dance – Fall Out Boy
Underdog – You Me At Six
Supermassive Black Hole – Muse
The footage backs this up too. I’ve got clips of people dancing to The Darkness, Evanescence, Linkin Park and Nickelback.
So this isn’t a story where the lesson is:
“Forget the alternative stuff. Pitbull works better.”
Quite the opposite.
The alternative material absolutely worked.
It just worked because the evening had earned its way there.
And sometimes the couple’s favourite music isn’t right for their own dancefloor
There was another useful moment late in the night.
One of the songs Becky and Brad had originally identified as a must-play was Manic – Wage War.
By that point in the night, though, I had a feeling this particular crowd probably wasn’t going to come with us if I pushed things that heavy.
I didn’t just quietly drop it. It had been on Becky and Brad’s must-play list, so I checked with Becky. I wanted to know whether hearing something at that level of heaviness was important to them, even if it wasn’t necessarily going to be the biggest dancefloor moment of the night.
Her answer, essentially, was:
Not for this crowd.
Perfect.
That gave me the information I needed. Becky still wanted more of the alternative side of their taste, but rather than pushing further into metalcore, she wanted more classic 2000s emo.
So we headed towards Panic! At The Disco, The Used, The All-American Rejects and Fall Out Boy instead.
I did try Throne – Bring Me The Horizon.
Becky and Brad loved it.
Most of the rest of the room… considerably less so.
Useful information!
So instead of stubbornly deciding everyone else was wrong, I moved on.
That’s what “reading the room” actually means. It doesn’t mean ignoring the couple and playing whatever I think will fill the floor. It means protecting their brief while responding to what is happening in front of us.
A mixed genre wedding playlist needs bridges, not boxes
This is the bit that Spotify can’t really plan in advance.
Look at one section of the actual set:
September – Earth, Wind & Fire
Bone To Pick – High Fade
Get Up Offa That Thing – James Brown
I Write Sins Not Tragedies – Panic! At The Disco
The Taste of Ink – The Used
Dirty Little Secret – The All-American Rejects
Thnks Fr Th Mmrs – Fall Out Boy
Throne – Bring Me The Horizon
The Middle – Jimmy Eat World
Since U Been Gone – A Day To Remember
Sweet Nothing – Calvin Harris feat. Florence Welch
Club Can’t Handle Me – Flo Rida feat. David Guetta
On paper, that’s faintly ridiculous.
On a spreadsheet, you’d probably put half of those songs in completely different genre columns.
On a dancefloor, they can make sense because the connections aren’t always genre.
Sometimes it’s energy.
Sometimes rhythm.
Sometimes nostalgia.
Sometimes a shared generation.
Sometimes the previous record tells you where you can go next.
That’s also why I don’t ask couples to programme five hours themselves. I’ve written separately about how I use wedding playlists without turning myself into a human Spotify playlist. Give me the DNA of the night. I’ll work out the route.
So… will your alternative wedding sometimes need Pitbull?
Maybe.
Yours might need Britney Spears.
Or Beyoncé.
Or ABBA.
Or absolutely none of them.
That’s the point.
A mixed genre wedding playlist shouldn’t be diverse because somebody has decided every wedding requires a democratic allocation of disco, Motown, indie, R&B, rock and current pop.
It should be diverse when you are diverse.
If your teenage years were spent listening to Kerrang! but your university nights out involved screaming along to Usher, both things are part of your musical history.
If your Spotify library contains Architects next to Girls Aloud, I’m not going to report you to the Alternative Music Police.
And if Pitbull is the record that suddenly unites your bridesmaids, your old uni mates and somebody’s uncle at exactly the point the room needs it?
Mr Worldwide is getting his three and a half minutes.
Your wedding doesn’t have to choose between “us” and “everyone else”
I think that’s ultimately what Becky and Brad’s wedding demonstrated.
Their night still unmistakably belonged to them.
They had their Normandie first dance. They got Nothing But Thieves, Viagra Boys, DON BROCO, Paramore, Linkin Park, Evanescence, Fall Out Boy and Bring Me The Horizon.
They also had Black Lace.
They had Rihanna.
They had Taio Cruz.
They had Pitbull.
And they finished the entire wedding with Club Can’t Handle Me – Flo Rida feat. David Guetta.
One of my best clips of the night is from that final song.
The lesson isn’t that alternative weddings secretly need mainstream music.
It’s that genre purity isn’t the goal.
The goal is a wedding that sounds recognisably like you, while still being alive to the people celebrating with you.
If you’re planning a wedding where your music taste doesn’t fit neatly into one box, that’s not a problem I need you to solve before you contact me.
That’s pretty much the interesting bit.
You can read more about how I build alternative wedding nights around the couple and the room, or tell me about your wedding and the music you’re trying to make coexist.
Becky and Brad’s Full Mixed Genre Wedding Playlist
If you’ve made it this far and want to see exactly how the night unfolded, here’s the full set in order.
This wasn’t a pre-written playlist. It developed on the night from Becky and Brad’s music preferences, their must-plays and what was actually happening on the dancefloor.
Ritual – Normandie
Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…) – Lou Bega
Cotton Eye Joe – Rednex
Aserejé (The Ketchup Song) – Las Ketchup
Livin’ la Vida Loca – Ricky Martin
It’s Raining Men – The Weather Girls
Superman – Black Lace
Y.M.C.A. – Village People
Tragedy – Steps
Funkytown – Lipps Inc.
Filthy Gorgeous – Scissor Sisters
Danger! High Voltage – Electric Six
Over and Over – Hot Chip
Dance Wiv Me – Dizzee Rascal feat. Calvin Harris & Chrome
The Way I Are – Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E.
Dynamite – Taio Cruz
DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love – Usher feat. Pitbull
Don’t Stop the Music – Rihanna
The Sweet Escape – Gwen Stefani feat. Akon
About You Now – Sugababes
Reach – S Club 7
Year 3000 – Busted
Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus
I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor – Arctic Monkeys
Let’s Dance to Joy Division – The Wombats
Naïve – The Kooks
What You Know – Two Door Cinema Club
Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand
Feel Good Inc. – Gorillaz
Fire Burning – Sean Kingston
Time of Our Lives – Pitbull & Ne-Yo
Hard Times – Paramore
Welcome to the DCC – Nothing But Thieves
Glue – Normandie
Pompeii – Bastille
Last Train to London – Electric Light Orchestra
Cos I Love You – Tom Misch
Lady (Hear Me Tonight) – Modjo
Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) – Spiller
Everybody Talks – Neon Trees
Everybody – DON BROCO
Ain’t No Thief – Viagra Boys
Liberty Belle – Fontaines D.C.
No One Knows – Queens of the Stone Age
I Believe in a Thing Called Love – The Darkness
Bring Me to Life – Evanescence
Faint – Linkin Park
Burn It to the Ground – Nickelback
Misery Business – Paramore
Dear Maria, Count Me In – All Time Low
Dance, Dance – Fall Out Boy
Underdog – You Me At Six
Supermassive Black Hole – Muse
Billie Jean – Michael Jackson
September – Earth, Wind & Fire
Bone to Pick – High Fade
Get Up Offa That Thing – James Brown
I Write Sins Not Tragedies – Panic! At The Disco
The Taste of Ink – The Used
Dirty Little Secret – The All-American Rejects
Thnks fr th Mmrs – Fall Out Boy
Throne – Bring Me The Horizon
The Middle – Jimmy Eat World
Since U Been Gone – A Day To Remember
Sweet Nothing – Calvin Harris feat. Florence Welch
Club Can’t Handle Me – Flo Rida feat. David Guetta
Planning an alternative wedding with a playlist that doesn’t fit neatly into one genre?
Good.
You don’t need to choose between a wedding that sounds like you and a dancefloor your friends and family actually want to be on.
Tell me what you love. Tell me what you absolutely don’t want to hear. Tell me about the strange crossover between emo, indie, metal, 00s R&B, pop-punk, guilty pleasures and whatever else has somehow ended up in your Spotify.
I’ll work out how to make it into a wedding.