Zedd on “Clarity’s” Staying Power: “It’s Timeless…Not Cheesy”

It first surfaced on iTunes way back in November of 2012, but "Clarity," by Zedd featuring Foxes, is still going strong on the charts...and everywhere else.  It's been performed on The Voice and Glee, and just this week, it soundtracked one couple's ballroom performance on Dancing with the Stars.  So why does the song seem to have such staying power?  Zedd says he's got a few guesses.

Zedd, whose birth name is Anton Zaslavski, thinks that "Clarity" is one of those rare songs that still sounds fresh, even though you've heard it a million times.  "There's a couple songs that just seem to be, I don't know...it's not like a trendy thing, but I guess it just stays relevant,. One example he cites is the Sia/David Guetta hit "Titanium."

"I mean, I don't know when that song came out, probably two and a half years ago...[but] that song is still super relevant to me," Zedd says of "Titanium."  "And I  hope that 'Clarity' will become something like that as well: not played out and gone, but kind of timeless in a way."

Another thing helping the song's popularity is that the lyrics describe, in a new way, a situation that's very common: being in a relationship with someone you know isn't good for you, but you just can't stay away.

"That's totally a very difficult balance to find," explains Zedd. "To say something that everybody knows, feels, or has felt before, in a way that still sounds, y'know, beautiful, and not cheesy."  And "Clarity" seems to have that particular quality.

"I've seen a lot of tweets of people that you know say, like, 'This describes my situation with my boyfriend or girlfriend perfectly' and stuff like that," he say's, "So I do think that that probably adds to the success of the song."

We'll see if fans embrace Zedd's brand-new single the way they have "Clarity."  It's called "Stay the Night," and it features Hayley Williams from Paramore on vocals.  It's the first release from the Deluxe Edition of Zedd's album, also called Clarity, which is due on Tuesday.