What Happened To: Hardwell & NWYR – Overcharge

For some people, NWYR might be a name not familiar or heard of, but for enthusiasts like us, it’s W&W’s trance alias, marking their return to the genre in 2017 with the huge hit ‘Voltage’. This time, I write about a quite controversial collaboration with the bossman Hardwell; ‘Overcharge’. 

Well, love it or hate it. Hardwell is one of my absolute favorite icons in the history of modern dance music. He has gained so much success and support from the biggest names like Tiësto, Chuckie, David Guetta, and many many more. The same goes to W&W and kudos to this amazing duo for keeping the bigroom relevant in 2020. All 3 of them hail from the same city; Breda in the Netherlands, the home of the greatest minds of Dutch EDM powerhouses. 3 of them worked on almost a dozen tracks and collabs for the past decade, whether officially credited or co-productions. 

Alright, it’s time we talk about the sound design of this track. The collaboration actually happened back in early 2017 when W&W played the track during their North American tour. The intro begins with piano strings which explains it opens the whole structure of the track followed by supersaw and silent buildup as it surprisingly took us to the next level. Then, the drop blasts off to the crowd with trance kicks. However, newer rumors surfaced that this could be the next Hardwell and W&W collab, rather than under the NWYR alias. Apparently, the collaboration was mentioned by W&W when they low-key introduced their side project at Ultra Miami 2017.

Robbert did play ‘Overcharge’ for a couple more times right before he made an announcement of taking a break from DJing. Plus, NWYR actively released a number of new tracks which they tried to choose the coolest and perfect IDs to be published. In an unnamed interview before he retired from touring, Robbert replied on the comment of when this hugely anticipated collab will be released, he replied he had no plans to release this and the version we all knew was just a festival demo version, similar to ‘Bliss’. Until then, I just hope that Hardwell returns with a bang, with the promise that he’ll release other IDs (notably Blasterjaxx collab) sometime in the future.

Written by Devanesh / Delacour Agency