Avicii’s hits brought EDM to mainstream
Conjure the sound of modern dance music in your head. What have you got? Probably a pounding pulse and huge drop? Swells of keyboards blasting out a hook you could dance to for days? How about a cool vocal sample for a soul legend — Etta James maybe?
There’s a chance you have something almost exactly like Avicii’s “Levels” bouncing around in your brain right now.
Swedish DJ Avicii, who passed away yesterday at 28, didn’t invent electronic dance music — he was part of a crew of millennials who turned underground house music into mainstream Top 40 a few years ago. But maybe more than anyone else, his catalog embodied the music’s signature style and his talent helped take the genre from clubs to arenas worldwide.
While the hook in 2011’s “Levels” is utterly simple — and utterly catchy — the Stockholm native born Tim Bergling saw room for that simple sound in everything. In 2013, teaming up with American soul singer Aloe Blacc, he wrote and produced “Wake Me Up.” On a bed of EDM beats and bumps, the pair saw the future of the genre and added country-influenced guitar and the Celtic folk pop recently pioneered by acts such as Mumford & Sons and Of Monsters & Men.
The world responded by making it one of the biggest singles ever. It hit No. 1 in almost two dozen countries — it has been certified platinum eight times over in Sweden — and hit the Top 10 in many more.
For Avicii, the success became a stepping stone to reaching more markets, markets no one thought the European-aesthetic of EDM could reach. His next global smash, which came just months later, “Hey Brother” doubled down on Americana influences by using Vermont bluegrass singer Dan Tyminski to anchor a throbbing track. A year later, Avicii basically turned a sea shanty into a club banger with “The Nights.”
Avicii’s mission statement seemed to be: From Idaho to Ibiza, get everybody on the dance floor. But that mission might have been changing.
The young icon’s latest single, “Lonely Together” from last year, featured a stripped-down version. No drops or synth blasts, just a pretty melody and Rita Ora’s big voice. Without the dance dressing, the song has tens of millions of streams. It appears Avicii looked to build even more bridges between styles nobody thought could be connected.