The shelf-stacker who became the highest-paid DJ

Adam Richard Wiles was born in Dumfries, Scotland, in 1984 to English parents and went to Dumfries High School. His first jobs were not glamorous: after leaving school he stocked supermarket shelves and worked in a local fish processing factory, all to pay for DJ equipment. Electronic music had caught his attention in his teens, and he started recording bedroom demos in 1999.

At eighteen he released two 12-inch club singles, “Da Bongos” and “Brighter Days”, under the name Stouffer, then moved to London hoping to learn from the scene there. Only one of his songs came out in that period, and his early records leaned on his own singing. His debut album, I Created Disco, followed in 2007, and Ready for the Weekend in 2009 gave him his first UK number one with “I'm Not Alone”.

The real leap came in 2012 with 18 Months, which topped the UK Albums Chart and made the US Billboard 200 for the first time. In 2013 he passed Michael Jackson's record for the most top ten singles from one album, with nine. In October 2014 he became the first artist to place three songs on the top 10 of Billboard's Dance/Electronic Songs chart at once, and the album Motion followed that year.

Later he moved toward a lighter groove. His 2017 album Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 peaked at number two in both the UK and the US, and it was followed by a second volume in 2022. He has won British Producer of the Year, received an Ivor Novello Award, and topped Forbes' list of the highest-paid DJs for six years in a row. It all began, more or less, with a part-time wage and a wish for decks.