Avicii, Superstar Swedish EDM DJ, Dies at 28
Tim Bergling, the Swedish DJ, musician, producer, and occasional Ralph Lauren model who performed under the name Avicii, has died at age 28, his publicist confirmed on Friday. “It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii,” the statement said. “He was found dead in Muscat, Oman, this Friday afternoon local time, April 20th. The family is devastated and we ask everyone to please respect their need for privacy in this difficult time. No further statements will be given.”
Bergling was born in Stockholm in 1989 and was making electronic music as early as 2007. In 2011, he released “Levels,” a megahit containing a sample from “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” by Etta James, launching his worldwide fame. In a 2013 profile in GQ, the magazine revealed that he was deejaying “250 nights a year and often earns six figures a show.” He also told writer Jessica Pressler about his hard-partying lifestyle: “You are traveling around, you live in a suitcase, you get to this place, there’s free alcohol everywhere—it’s sort of weird if you don’t drink,” he said. “I just got into a habit, because you rely on that encouragement and self-confidence you get from alcohol, and then you get dependent on it.” He was eventually hospitalized for acute pancreatitis in January 2012, and in 2014 he had his gallbladder and appendix removed.
As Avicii, Bergling collaborated with some of the industry’s biggest names, including David Guetta, Madonna, and Coldplay. In March 2016, he announced that he was retiring from touring, citing health concerns, but did not stop making music. “To me it was something I had to do for my health,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “The scene was not for me. It was not the shows and not the music. It was always the other stuff surrounding it that never came naturally to me. All the other parts of being an artist. I’m more of an introverted person in general. It was always very hard for me. I took on board too much negative energy, I think.“ He told THR that “I just feel happy. I feel free at this point. Like I have my private life back and focusing on myself for the first time in a long time. This was obviously the hardest decision of my life so far. But so far it has paid off tremendously in terms of well-being for me. I’m happier than I have been in a very, very long time. Stress-free more than I have been in a very long time. I can’t say I’m never going to have a show again. I just don’t think I’m going to go back to the touring life.”
His website’s homepage reads: “We all reach a point in our lives and careers where we understand what matters the most to us. For me it’s creating music. That is what I live for, what I feel I was born to do. Last year I quit performing live, and many of you thought that was it. But the end of live never meant the end of Avicii or my music. Instead, I went back to the place where it all made sense—the studio. The next stage will be all about my love of making music to you guys. It is the beginning of something new. Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.” In 2017, Bergling released a six-track EP called Avīci (01) and was featured in a documentary, Avicii: True Stories.
“A great DJ interacts with the audience,” Bergling told GQ. “You have to engage people. Dancing, smiling. . . . It sounds very abstract, but a great DJ takes his audience on a journey. You want them so into it that they can’t leave. The tracks that get the attention are the songs that create some kind of feeling. And that became a precondition for everything we did in the studio.” Fellow DJs and musicians (including Joel Thomas Zimmerman, known professionally as deadmau5, with whom Bergling had a very well-documented and seemingly contentious relationship) began tweeting condolences as soon as the news broke:
