Peggy Gou Is Paving Her Own Path & Mentoring Other Women DJs Along The Way

It is around midnight at the Playa Pacha openair nightclub in the FIVE LUXE hotel in Dubai. German DJ Gerd Janson has just dropped a remix of Stevie Nick’s “Edge Of Seventeen” when Peggy Gou appears next to him, diamond-clad in a Q Park Millinery sparkly bandana, with a cat on the front reading “Mew Mew,” paired with a black two-piece. I am standing behind the decks, watching her slink into the space with her entourage, as the crowd reacts to her presence. Someone next to me breathlessly exclaims “queen”, in a way that seems involuntarily. As the crowd howls in unison and Gou clasps their hands, I am struck by how comfortable she looks.

It is hard to believe that once upon a time, Gou was just starting out in the underground scene; she seems as if she was plonked down on earth, already a successful 34-year-old, with her knowing, winning smile and covered in patchwork tattoos, cigarette in one hand, tending to the decks with the other. The ‘female DJ’ as an archetype has gone through many iterations, but never before has she propelled herself into mainstream stardom the way Peggy Gou has. In a short space of time, she achieved global fame, headlined major festivals like Coachella and Glastonbury, created global hits like "(It Goes Like) Nanana," and became the first Korean to play the world-renowned legacy club Berghain. 

The FIVE LUXE hotel is flooded with Brits escaping the December chill at home, as well as Americans, Russians, and other European clientele. Backed by the hotel’s luxury ecosystem project, the FIVE LUXE has a “do more with less” ethos and is 100% solar powered, making it the world’s highest-rated 5-Star Hotel green building under LEED v4 (the international standard for high-performance green buildings). FIVE’s service is the best I’ve ever experienced (even my battered Vagabond handbag gets its own seat at every table), and I’m grateful I packed my Swarovski Loop ear plugs (the only sparkly thing I own) so I just about fit in with the bold and flash crowd.

I ask Peggy to describe Dubai’s club scene in three words, to which she enthusiastically responds “energetic, diverse and growing!” Considering a huge 90% of the population are expats, she’s not wrong. FIVE’s Palm Jeremiah hotel (also in Dubai) even boasts its own recording studio, and with a club in Ibiza too, it’s clear the team has set their sights on Dubai as their next ultimate party destination. They have the cash, and they plan to spend it on the best talent money can buy; hosting the likes of Carl Cox, Marco Carola and Solomun at Playa Pacha. 

When she was 18, Peggy Gou went to study at the London College of Fashion with hopes of becoming a designer, then a photographer, then a stylist. But she’d always been passionate about music, and eventually found a way to use her skills in fashion promotion to fill a gap in electronic music. While most house and techno DJs dress understated, she knew her style would play a pivotal role in her success once she began producing music and cutting her teeth at small venues in London and Berlin. I ask her why these grassroots spaces are important right now, and her critical eye shines: “Club culture continues to influence many aspects of creative industries far beyond music. Without grassroots and independent venues, we will lose the very foundations of electronic music as we know it,” Gou says. 

Above all, Gou is a strategic and smart producer, and is incredibly intentional about what she puts out and why. Back in July 2018, I had just finished my undergraduate degree in Manchester in the UK, and a label called Defected Records reigned supreme among most of my friends who were into house music. It was on this label that Gou released a remix of Shakedown’s “At Night (Peggy Gou’s Acid Journey Remix)” that defined the summer. As catchy, accessible and pop-fluent as the chorus was, it never seemed to get old, and hit #1 on the UK Official Dance Singles Chart. Everywhere you went, the At Night remix was playing. The pulsing vocal could be heard from Manchester, to London, to party island Ibiza, often heard in a rendition similar to that of a football chant. With this single, Gou propelled herself into the dance music world, then onto the global stage, and hasn’t slowed down since. 

Blowing up in electronic music as a woman, can be your best and worst nightmare all at once. Overnight, you are successful, impressive, and adored. But six months later you are likely to fall victim to criticism for something, like being too commercial or having rich parents. Her haters will say that she sold out, that once Peggy Gou had everyone feeling “much better… at night”, she was no longer the underground DJ sensation who cut her teeth in clubs in London and Berlin – they’d lost her to A-list status. Charli XCX touched on this in her recent substack titled “The Death of Cool.” XCX wrote, “I have always rejected the idea that art, film, persona or music becoming commercial means it cannot also be considered cool. The rejection of commerciality ‘just because’ is such a boring and immature argument that is perhaps more suited to some mediums than others but in general I find to be elitist in a way that does not thrill me whatsoever,” she continued. “Disliking something purely because of its widespread popularity or links to commercialism comes with a distinctly art school type energy that is super triggering to me.”

Charli XCX is right, artists can’t take this chatter personally – just because some fans in the electronic music space have a habit of tarnishing those who rise to success quickly, especially if you’re a woman. At the same time, it is not wholly uncommon to witness legends (often male), playing what can only be described as the worst set you’ve seen in your life, on no sleep, without consequence or fallout in the scene.

When cool points are gained on the basis of youth and niche references, mainstream success can become the enemy in certain circles. Once something transcends the underground, it transforms into something else entirely. But Peggy never forgot her roots; a genre-blending selector with range, she’s known for her energetic but composed sets. She often plays a combination of pulsing house, techno and break beats, dropping tunes from artists like DJ Seinfeld, Andre Zimmer, as well as hosting the likes of DMX Krew and Regularfantasy on her label. 

Sure, it’s inevitable that those who are successful will be criticized. Someone’s song blows up, they get big, and then we get bored until they do something else remarkable. But in this corner of entertainment, it’s silly to dismiss a DJ because of their accolades. To paint a picture, a Berlin-based journalist I met recently told me (with a straight face) that because Gou is never seen in the local pubs in Berlin, it must mean she doesn’t actually live there (she does). So let’s set the record straight, aside from electronic music’s swirling pool of cool that has a habit of eating the principles it so vehemently defends, I can confirm that Gou is touring the world, looking sensational, and most importantly very, very good at her job. 

To get a broader picture of how she shaped her taste, I ask Gou to name an album, movie and a book that was essential in her cultural education. For her movie she selects cult classic Pulp Fiction (which tracks with her style), the book is Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (there’s that critical thinking), and a true music head, she sites Kraftwerk’s 3-D: The Catalogue (Live) as the ultimate education. Gou explains how she still tries to make it down to grassroots venues, “not just as a DJ but more importantly as a raver, which I always find inspiring and cathartic.” Her dedication to a range of culture shows in the sets she plays, so I think we can forgive her for not sharing a pint with us at the local boozer.

In March 2019, Gou realized she wanted to own her own music and uplift other artists on the rise, so she created Gudu Records and released her own album titled “Moment”. A few years ago, I interviewed the Italian DJ Matisa, who has released music on Peggy Gou’s label. When I asked her about her experience as a woman in the industry, she credited Gou as a brilliant mentor to herself and others in the dance music community, adding that she’s very hard working and down to earth. I ask Gou about her mission to lift up other DJs like Matisa, and she stresses the importance of not only supporting new talent via Gudu but also including the newcomers on her line-ups IRL, “this is not just focused on the fact they’re women, they’re exceptionally talented and it’s important for me to use my platform to share that with the world”. 

With rising costs for venues and AI music creation causing a stir, who knows where 2026 will take electronic music. I ask Gou if she’s optimistic about where the industry is heading, in terms of building a better future for those that follow her success and she leaves me with a gem of hope that mirrors the energy she brings to the industry: “I’m optimistic for sure, but as with anything growing as fast as our industry, it won’t be without its challenges.”