The pop side of dance meets EDM on
Ultra Dance 14, a star-studded collection of floor-fillers that proves the label's licensing department is willing to pony up the dough. Here, Ultra's paid the big money for names like
Deadmau5 (represented by a noisy remix of "The Veldt"),
Calvin Harris (
Florence + the Machine's
Florence Welch goes emo-diva on his disco heartbreaker "Sweet Nothing"), and
Chris Brown (R&B meets Euro-disco on "Don't Wake Me Up"), plus two superstars come together when
Owl City teams with
Carly Rae Jepsen for the aptly titled singalong "Good Time." Then there's
Nicki Minaj guesting on a kinetic
Enur track,
Pitbull using his
Mr. Worldwide pseudonym for some Miami party pop, and that dubstep-meets-power-ballad
Alex Clare cut "Too Close," which was everywhere in 2012 but barely seems to fit here. It's the oldest choice -- the
Benny Benassi chestnut "Satisfaction" is the 2012 speaker-ripping remix -- and possible party-stopper of the set, and while the mixing is sometimes exciting, often OK, and occasionally clumsy, the sequencing works well, with both discs slowly working up to their "big room"-styled closers. ~ David Jeffries