Cheat Codes have been innovators in the dance music scene for well over a decade. A talented team of songwriters known for hits like “No Promises”, “Sex”, and “Shed a Light”, Cheat Codes have branched out to many other genres like country, pop, and hip-hop.
Their 2025 album Future Renaissance features collaborations with Cee Lo Green, Kenny G, Train, Linney, Ownboss, and Julia Church. A return to their roots and a journey into new sounds, the album is an essential part of Cheat Codes’ discography.
We talked to Cheat Codes in Chicago last September at Summer’s Last Dance festival. We interviewed them previously just before the release of Future Renaissance and saw them perform at festivals like Stagecoach. Watch the full interview below and follow Premier Music Podcast on YouTube for more.
Let’s start by talking about Future Renaissance. It’s one of your biggest original releases yet. What are some of your favorite qualities of that final product?
Trevor [Cheat Codes]: Future Renaissance is special to me because it feels reminiscent of our earlier music and how we got started. Throughout the years, we’ve tried many different types of genres and worked with many artists, whether it’s hip-hop, alternative, or rock. It was nice to go back to the sound that we started with and experiment with the new version of that.
Matt [Cheat Codes]: We come from a songwriting background. Trevor actually used to be in a singer-songwriter project named Plug In Stereo. We wanted to do electronic music but do live instrumentation. One of our songs, “Go To Hell”, we did with our good friend Jackson Foote, who wrote on “No Promises” with us. It was cool to collaborate with some of the OG writers we first worked with. We recorded live piano, and also got Kenny G on a record to do live sax. We actually got the saxophone player from Two Friends, Casey, on “Go To Hell”.
You also collaborated with artists like Cee Lo Green, Ownboss, Julia Church, and many others on this album and past albums too. What’s one collab that was particularly special to you and why?
T: The Cee Lo Green song is pretty special to us. We were specifically targeting him for that song after we wrote it. We had Bryn Christopher, who we wrote “Go To Hell” with, and his voice is just insanely good and in a very high register. After we wrote it, it was like, either Cee Lo Green sings this, or Bruno Mars, or we’re never gonna release this song. It was too high and crazy of a vocal. We just kept sending it to Cee Lo over and over, and eventually, he was down. You just have to be persistent.
M: We did a song with Bryn on One Night in Nashville, and it was one of the reasons we did that album. We couldn’t find anyone to sing this part on “Never Love You Again” because it was so high. It was supposed to be a UK dance house track, but we ended up getting Little Big Town on the song. Which is a country band. And we’re like, okay, why not? And then it turned into a whole album.
T: It’s funny that we all had our minds made up. It had to be Cee Lo. Even if he says no in the beginning, we have to make it happen. Let’s have him write his own lyrics for the verses. What were some ways we could get him excited about the song? We just tried until he said yes.
M: For anyone that’s just starting out, in music, business, or anything, sometimes you have to send things like 3,4,5,6 times. I’ll have good friends who send me records that I just don’t listen to right away.
What’s some other advice you would have for artists, maybe thinking about where you were 10 years ago, that you would have in terms of production and making music?
T: Finding out what you’re good at and really honing in on it, and trying to make that benefit you as much as possible. Like Matt was mentioning, when we started, we weren’t some crazy electronic producers. We came into it with more of a songwriting perspective that knew how to produce and sing and create value for other artists who would want to collaborate. So it’s all about making things happen and figuring out what value you can bring to the table. And working with other people to create something special.
M: Our first big song was “Sex”, which we were actually writing for Kygo, but he turned it down. So we reproduced it on our own. Figure out what you’re good at and how you can collaborate with people who are good at other things, like mixing, writing, or creativity. In the beginning, what really helped me was setting deadlines. We were gonna put out a song every month. Otherwise, we would overthink it. We would’ve tried to do like 10 versions of the same song and tried to perfect each one. And then you end up spending too much time just tweaking a synth or something.
You guys opened for Katy Perry a couple times this year for some stadium shows. What was that like?
T: Any time you get to play a show where Katy Perry has crazy production and dancers and visuals, all of that stuff is super cool, and you don’t get to see that for every show. When you get to play a high production show it’s really fun, and we got to go after and watch it from the pit in the front row. Katy Perry is a legend and she’s had more hits than most people could ever dream of having, so it was cool to play shows with someone like that.
You’ve been at the forefront of the music scene for a while. Where do you see the electronic scene heading in the future, and how does your music fit into that?
T: I feel like the older we get, especially with this new album we started writing the last few weeks, is that we do what we want to do and not really think about what other people expect from us. Just make it authentic and make it feel real. When everyone goes right, let’s go left. When everyone is doing a specific type of music, the next thing we want to do probably won’t sound like anything else. Some people might hate it or love it. But we have fun doing that. I want to make stuff we enjoy making, so our next project is going to be very much that. In a world that’s getting so AI and more and more synthetic, the more human we can make the next album, the better.
Author: @michael__premier
Photos: @austincalderonephotography
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