Eric Prydz on Playing ‘Call on Me’ For the First Time in 20 Years: ‘I Was As Shocked As Everyone Else’

At a set this past March in Austin, Texas, it happened. Eric Prydz played “Call on Me.”

It’s been long-running dance world lore that the legendary Swedish producer might never again play out his 2004 hit, which famously weaves in elements of Steve Winwood‘s 1982 soft rock smash “Valerie.” “Call on Me” had not, in fact, been heard in a Prydz set since 2005.

But on March 15 at Austin venue The Concourse Project, Prydz dropped it, first playing Winwood’s original “Valerie” before transitioning to “Call on Me.” Predictably, the audience (and then the internet) went crazy. As Prydz tells it, even he was surprised.

“I was just flicking through my SD card looking for music and I saw a special edit of the track I have,” Prydz recently told Billboard in a story about his new Holosphere 2.0 show. “I turned around to my tour manager like, ‘Stefan, should I play ‘Call on Me’?’ It was almost like a joke. He looked at me, like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ I was like ‘Are you sure?’ I was like, ‘Well, it’s in the same key as the track I’m playing now,’ so I just played it. There was no planning. I was as shocked as everyone else.”

Included on Billboard‘s list of the 100 best dance songs of all time, “Call on Me” was released by Prydz via Ministry of Sound in September of 2004, with Winwood so loving the track that he even re-recorded his vocals for Prydz to use.

Prydz told Billboard that while playing the song felt “weird” given that he hadn’t played it for two decades, “it was time,” adding that I’ll wait another 20 years and I’ll play it again.” 

That said, he did in fact play it again after shortly thereafter, at a set in Brighton Beach, UK on July 19.

Watch video from the “Call on Me” moment in March at The Concourse Project below and from the set in Brighton Beach here.