Ely Oaks Remixes Taylor Swift — And Opens 2026 Like He Means It

From 280 million combined streams to an official Republic Records release, the Berlin-based Austrian is moving at a pace that's hard to ignore.

Some artists have a breakout year. Ely Oaks had a breakout campaign. The Austrian-born, Berlin-based producer spent 2025 methodically building one of the more convincing cases in dance music — not through hype cycles or algorithmic luck, but through records that actually stuck. "Running Around" is closing in on 150 million Spotify streams. "Borderline" is already past 130 million. Combined, that's north of 280 million plays on a platform where most artists never sniff those numbers on a single track. He closed the year with more high-profile moves — a remix of James Hype's "Waterfalls" and a headline collab with Elle King on "Ex's & Oh's" — and then, in case anyone needed further confirmation that 2026 was going to operate on a different level entirely, came the announcement that would have any producer doing a double-take: an official Ely Oaks remix of Taylor Swift's recent single "Opalite," out via Republic Records and Universal Music Group, landing globally on Spotify February 20th. That's not a fan edit. That's not a SoundCloud rip. That's one of the most powerful music labels on the planet handing you the keys.

On the remix itself, Ely has been refreshingly candid about the pressure — and the process. "The moment you get the task to remix a Taylor Swift single is very special. Firstly it's a huge honor, secondly you sit there and realise that this needs to be perfect. It's easy to overthink here, I threw away a lot of the initial ideas. It's a very big challenge to add something to a song that's already so great. It took a few tries to finally get something that actually felt like a spark to me. Extremely happy that the end product made it to the official EP and so excited to hear what all of the fans think about it!" That kind of honesty is rare, and it says something about where Ely sits as an artist right now — confident enough in his craft to admit vulnerability, and disciplined enough to keep scrapping drafts until the idea earned its place. The result is a remix that doesn't try to compete with the original so much as carve out its own emotional lane within it, which is exactly the right instinct when you're working with source material that carries that kind of cultural weight.

The timing, intentional or not, is immaculate. The "Opalite" remix dropped just days before Ely kicked off his North American tour on February 27th — a run that's already selling out across Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver, Vancouver, Calgary, and beyond. Before even hitting the States, he spent the first half of February in Australia, playing Dreamstate festivals and sweeping through Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane with the kind of international itinerary that signals an artist operating on a genuinely global footing. That North American run now has the kind of release moment behind it that most touring artists can only dream of — a major-label drop on a major artist's project, arriving right as the tour machine fires up. For Ely Oaks, 2026 isn't a new chapter so much as a logical escalation. The streams were already there. The credibility was already built. Now the platform is catching up.

Listen to "Opalite (Ely Oaks Remix)":