“Four years ago, Tim Bergling was a high school kid in Stockholm, remixing songs on his laptop in the style of house-music acts like Swedish House Mafia and posting the results in the comments sections of music blogs.” – Jessica Pressler, GQ
With an iTunes number 1 single that wouldn’t go away, now he DJs around 250 nights a year, to crowds of tens of thousands, and is allegedly worth $7 million. In a surprisingly revealing feature in GQ magazine, which it must be noted he has publicly taken issue with, he reveals what it really took to ‘come out of nowhere’.
After being spotted by promotor Ash Pournouri for his talent for writing a catchy melody, the pair produced “like a hundred” tracks, tirelessly and systematically developing a formula for music that would work both on the dancefloors and the radio and propel them to global stardom. Having mastered this, he spent 18 months learning to DJ, and now clearly works a touring schedule so relentless it has put him in hospital at least once.
‘Coming out of nowhere’, it seems, takes a seed of potential and an awful lot of very focused hard work to learn what is needed to get to the top.
Despite the controversy over whether he did or didn’t say DJing is easy, I found Avicii’s story a fascinating tale of what it takes to learn to be one of the biggest dance musicians in the world, and the consequences of taking on such a task… I’ve always thought life isn’t about having idols, but about learning what you can from the best and the worst of other people’s experiences. To me, there is plenty to learn from in this story.
Read the full article here, but be aware it contains strong language and references to drug use.
Image: CC BY Jalil Arfaoui
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