Martin Garrix & Khalid’s 2018 collab ‘Ocean’ turns 2 years old

Oh 2018, what a time to be alive. Back in 2018, we had no pandemic. World Cup watchers really thought football WAS (finally!) “coming home”, and hoards of ravers spent their festival season ‘Losing It’ to the sound of Fisher‘s tech-house stomper. But whilst Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa ruled 2018 from a commercial point of view, dominating radio charts with ‘One Kiss’, another ‘EDM’ superstar was making waves with a collab of his own. We are, of course, referring to Martin Garrix. Debuting his track ‘Ocean’ on this day 2 years ago, the STMPD superstar roped in the vocal talents of Khalid on the track, with the silky R&B mogul already achieving huge crossover success with trap-pop-turned-Fortnite maestro, Marshmello.

Not only did the original of ‘Ocean’ dominate various DJ sets in 2018, achieving almost 400 million Spotify streams to date, but it was also responsible for a range of incredible remixes, including the euphoric Dubvision rework, and the bass-in-your-face remix from Holy Goof, a thunderous whopper which still leaves us trembling almost two years later! Since the release, Martin Garrix has – predictably – continued to smash everything he touches, releasing tracks such as ‘Mistaken‘, ‘Summer Days’, and ‘Higher Ground’ with ‘Don’t You Worry Child‘ and ‘Save The World‘ vocalist, John Martin. Though on the DJ front, Martin’s crown has slipped in the annual DJ Mag Top 100 poll, with Belgian pair Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike usurping the young Dutchman in 2019. With this year’s poll set to occur again in October – amid a year of very few live DJ sets due to the COVID-19 situation – who do you think will take the crown? Perhaps David Guetta, who has been delighting us all with this ‘United At Home‘ livestreams? Maybe even Don Diablo, who has continued to rise year upon year? Or perhaps someone else…

But until then… Let’s relive this 2018 classic below!

Image Credit: Louis van Baar