Meet Charlotte Adams, your union DJ

Whilst most of you are getting wasted, there is at least one person in the club paying attention. Charlotte Adams, a third year psychology student, explains why she DJs.

What made you want to spin discs?

I must admit, when I first thought to myself, hey I want to be a DJ, I didn’t have the most honourable intentions in mind. Don’t get me wrong, I love music, in all its forms, and can follow a beat after seven years of trumpet playing in school bands. However, as honourable as those reasons are, I still wanted to look dope as shiz spinning records like a bau$. And anybody who tells you they got into DJ-ing without even letting that thought cross their mind is lying. I’m keeping it real as it gets, being a DJ is cool, and I wanted to be on that level.

Glowsticks make me edgier

Where can we see you play?

I’m at the Union in club 601 for Wednesdays or as an opener on Fridays for The Bop. Sometimes I play Thursdays at the bar. Every other Wednesday I’m at the lizard, (although I’m no DJ Ian), and then I play at other one-off events around St Andrews. I recently did a freshers party for Tailend Restaurant and Starlight Ball last semester. I’m trying to break into the Ball scene, if you know of any going!

Wild!

Do you have to be cool to be a DJ?

I don’t want to come across like a pretentious prat, and I’d like to emphasise to you, readers, that I, am not cool. When my friends learnt I wanted to pursue the disc spinning lifestyle, they were a bit taken aback. They know I like getting 10 hours sleep a night, listening to a lot of Taylor Swift and wearing pyjamas during the day. I am not unapproachably hipster. DJ’s are normal people too!

I firmly believe that you do not HAVE to have extensive knowledge of ‘so deep it’s basically 1000 miles underground at the sea floor’ house music. Or only hang out at Taste because Pumpkin Spice Latte’s makes your eyes bleed. I am so uncool, I could probably make DJ-ing not cool. I’ve only managed to  level my hip and happinin’ sea-saw sliding slowly down into the pits of being a saddo, and that’s definitely not from listening to techno.

What’s your favourite track right now?

Sigala’s Easy Love is such a happy addition to my set. As well as the Blasterrjaxx remix to Carly Rae Jepson’s ‘I really like you’. Charts wise – I cannot stop singing Selena Gomez & A$Ap’s Good for you. The song is hypnotic.

There are so many buttons!

Why do you think you’re a good DJ?

I don’t think a lot of music snobs would like my taste in music. A lot of the time, I like what they call ‘sellout, money making melodies’ that probably don’t capture the essence of what the music industry is (or used to be) about. However, I had a crucial advantage, I’d spent a lot of my weekends (and weekdays, if I’m honest) on a dance floor in my life.

I knew what people like to dance to, because, I literally LOVE dancing. I have no professional training and one time a guy genuinely pointed at me and laughed when I was throwing some shapes, but it still hasn’t put me off. I’m always jumping around like an idiot in Zumba because I’m having such a good time. And exercise releases endorphins, which Legally Blonde taught me, make you happy. So by logical progression, if dancing is exercise, which releases endorphins, which make you happy, then you can easily make a crowd happy if you make them dance.

Therefore I play songs I like to dance to, which is often coincidentally the same as the rest of all the basics in the room. Appealing to them is a lot easier if you are one (she says, whilst sipping on her own PSL writing this).

Trying to find ‘play’, buts its too dark!

What’s your favourite club?

I think a club is somewhere with at least two rooms playing two different types of music, which there are none of in St Andrews. However, I’m a big union fan, but I’m biased because I’m on ENTS (SSC entertainments) committee in charge of training and organising DJs for club nights. I’m also one of the rare people that can enjoy the Lizard sober.

An Essex girl through and through though, I love the cheesy ones in my hometown where everyone gets super dressed up. Everything is a little bit too casual here!

What’s the best bit about what you do?

There’s a massive level of self-satisfaction. You’re basically the epitome of Big Willy’s ‘party starter’. You ARE the DJ so you can play YOUR song and then we can all dance all night till the early morn. And oh, there’s an insane amount of love for your crowd when you play the song you can’t get out of your head, and then the entire dance floor keeps going like they love it too. It’s unbeatable. I would never trade it in.

Looking like I’m doing lots however I am just picking a song