Tim Bergling

Avicii’s dead. Tim Bergling, the Swedish producer, found in Muscat at twenty-eight. No detail about how, no explanation, just gone.

I caught Wake Me Up in a Berlin club in 2014, not the kind of place I usually end up in, but the track pulled the whole room into the same moment. Avicii had this quality where euphoria sounded like grief, or maybe the other way around—everything tilted at an angle. His production was raw sometimes, almost acoustic, like he was trying to make dance music out of fingerpicking and heartbreak. He collaborated with the obvious names—Daft Punk, Eric Prydz, Steve Angello—but never sounded like anyone else.

He started young, making beats as a teenager. The stage name came from the Buddhist concept of hell, which either works as dark humor or complete prophecy depending on how you look at it. Won a music competition in 2008, signed deals, and ten years later he was producing some of the most heard tracks in the world. Levels, Wake Me Up, Lonely Together. Songs that moved through every club and festival, designed to make a crowd feel the same thing at the same time.

What strikes me is the trajectory. Kid starts with a C64 remix, somehow ends up making music with Daft Punk, then burns out trying to find a life that doesn’t revolve around being Tim Bergling in front of crowds. He’d been sick, stepped back from touring, and then he just wasn’t here anymore. All the clubs are still playing his tracks. People are still dancing to it, still feeling that moment of suspension he built.

I think about that a lot.