After announcing that he would quit touring in 2016, Swedish DJ and producer Avicii, took a holiday to Kenya accompanied by a high school friend.
They hired a tent on the edge of the Maasai Mara to witness the Great Migration of more than a million wildebeest.
For the first time in more than five years of touring the world, Avicii was mentally relaxed and watched in delight as a group of Maasai traditional dancers hummed and moved their bodies in perfect rhythm.
“I have to work with these singers, I’m coming back here, recording some songs,” he told their tour guide. “Then I will donate all the proceeds to you the Maasai.”
In April 2018, Avicii emailed the same camp in the Mara saying he wanted to rent the entire facility with a crew of 20 people to work on a musical project.
The Maasai singers would provide a fresh dimension to his music, he figured. That same month the 28-year-old took his own life while on a holiday in Oman.
Tim Bergling took his stage name from the Buddhist word for the ‘lowest hell’ where those who have committed the gravest misdeeds are reborn.
His dream was to make timeless music and the young Swede sold out arenas around the world, playing his brand of high tempo dance music, and produced songs for Madonna, Wyclef Jean, and Coldplay.
Ironically his roller coaster rise to global fame, left him feeling emotionally empty and eventually consumed him when he committed suicide in 2018.
A group of Swedish filmmakers have gathered hundreds of hours of private footage to chronicle his remarkable life in the documentary Avicii: I’m Tim, which premiered on Netflix on December 31, 2024.
Avicii’s personal reflections, provide the narration for a story that is both exuberant and tragic.
Here was an unlikely celebrity: scruffy, uncomfortable around people and hesitant even about his music. He suffered anxiety and stress, but when he got on stage, he was a ball of energy.
Growing up in a privileged family in Stockholm, Tim was bought him a guitar by his music-loving father, but as he admitted, he didn’t have the endurance to practice on the instrument.
The self-described melody freak found his love with computer audio software, where he spent hours fiddling with sequences, watched YouTube tutorials and skipped school to create beats with a friend.
“He was one of the most natural melody writers I ever met in my life,” says legendary producer and guitarist Nile Rogers in the documentary. “I would play a riff and in like a few seconds, he would instinctively make it the bassline.”
His breakthrough hit Levels featuring a sample from a 1962 song by Etta James, hit almost 20 million views on YouTube by late 2011 without even being officially released.
The story of how Universal Music paid 500 million euros for the rights to release Levels is one of the intriguing revelations in this documentary. As it turned out the company recouped its investment in just six weeks of the release.
When he announced his debut studio album True, Avicii said the music was not going to be a replication of his club anthems. Instead, he reached out to influences from country music to gospel and rock, what he called folk-electronica.
“I think country music and house could be cool as hell,” he told his dad.
Among those he called on was American singer Aloe Blacc whose “dark voice” he reckoned would give a new song he was working on a splash of soul. That song is what became the global smash Wake Me Up released in June 2013.
Bluegrass musician Dan Tyminski, who humorously admits that he only found out about Avicii by asking his daughter, lent his folksy tenor to the other big anthem Hey Brother.
When the album True arrived in September 2013, it was widely hailed as a transformative moment in pop music led by this 24-year-old Swedish innovator who took acoustic instruments into the dance music realm.
“Tim was not like a cocky person,” recalls French DJ/producer David Guetta. “He would always doubt himself, but when he played this (album), he knew it, I could see in his look,”.
By 2015, he had reached a level at which he competed for attention with the biggest stars on the planet. But behind the scenes the shy boy who was struggling to cope with the demands of fame, was battling health challenges like pancreatitis, and addiction to alcohol and painkillers.
In between a stint at a drug rehabilitation clinic in the Spanish island, Ibiza, Avicii released his second album Stories in October 2015. He cleaned up his act but in his final days struggled to regain his work ethic and his record company became frustrated as his creativity waned and he turned down projects and meetings such as one arranged with the legendary producer Quincy Jones.
The 28-year-old was found dead on April 20, 2018, while on vacation in Oman.
Avicii – I’m Tim offers an intimate portrayal of the wunderkind who paid the price for his dream of giving the world timeless music.
