Earlier this week I interviewed a prominent R&B singer. She’s young, gorgeous, abs you could chip your teeth on and a smile that makes your knees wobbly. She’s a great singer and she not only writes a lot of her own music, but records some of it at home. The thing is though, her songwriting talents tend to get really overshadowed by the fact that she’s a sexy dancer and a model too.

She told me about how there was a conflict with her record label about her album cover. She wanted a picture that covered her face, they refused. The end result is a front on image of her, not wearing very much.

It’s no secret that sex sells, that’s a tale as old as time itself. But it made me think about electronic producers – especially bedroom producers and artists who try and maintain at least a degree of anonymity.

With a few exceptions, electronic music is unique in that it’s not really image-based. Unlike R&B, certainly unlike pop and even unlike genres like metal where artists almost seem required to conform to a certain ‘look,’ the popularity of electronic music isn’t often based on what the producer looks like.

Zhu stayed anonymous while he blew up. Daft Punk have worn their helmets pretty much forever. Deadmau5′ trademark is his mouse head, SBTRKT dons a kind of tribal mark, Squarepusher recently started wearing this amazing crazy digital mask, the list goes on. Bedroom producers release songs on the internet without any photos. In a world dominated by image and sex and looks, electronic music champions the idea of placing the music before the man (or woman.)

The singer I interviewed felt pigeonholed because her looks have distracted from her talents, and one of the great things about most producers is that they don’t really need to use their image to sell their music. Sure, some of them are really really really good looking. But while there’s a lot of pop stars who are preened and perfect, to a point where you think, “they’re clearly only famous because they’re sexy,” it’s really quite rare when this happens within dance music, except I guess for the really top-end commercial stuff.

People might become known for how they look – Skrillex’s hair and glasses are as famous as his music, for instance, but again, their talent comes before their appealing look. Most producers don’t really need to focus on sculpting their pecs in order to be popular, and I think that’s great.

Well done dance community!