Before His Death in 2018, Avicii Sought Out Some Historic Collaborations With the Old Guard (But They Never Came to Be)

The masses credit the rise of EDM, house music, techno, dubstep, and other electronic-based genres to many artists, including Avicii. Prior to the 2000s, DJs such as Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Frankie Knuckles, and Juan Atkins helped pioneer the movement. However, after the turn of the century in the 2010s, several other musicians helped bring it to the mainstream. And Avicii was one of the artists doing it on the biggest of scales.

Videos by American Songwriter

Before his passing in 2018, Avicii became the voice of a generation, despite the fact that he only sang on a handful of his tracks. Though, that wasn’t his jam. Rather, his jam was creating songs that felt never-ending, as well as hypnotically and pleasurably imprisoning. In his catalog, his quintessential hits include “The Nights”, “Wake Me Up”, “Waiting For Love”, and “Hey Brother”.

While Avicii’s style is primarily rooted in a new school of thought, he did aspire to blend the old and the new. Particularly, before his passing, Acivii reached out to some of the most decorated musicians of the 20th century to collaborate. Though they never said yes, thus, the collaborations never came to fruition.

Mick Jagger and More: Why Avicii Never Got a “Yes” From the Old Guard

In 2018, Avicii passed away at 28 years old. His memory lives on through his music and the book, Tim: The Official Biography Of Avicii. The biography details Avicii’s life in pristine detail, and one of the many stories in the book is about his desire to collaborate with some musicians who reside in the old school of thought.

In the book, author Måns Mosesson writes, “Tim[Avicii] had wanted musicians like Paul Simon, a legend who made smart ballads in the 60s… The other requests Tim had made were not easy either. Mick Jagger said no; Van Morrison’s representatives were vague in their answer, giving a kind of half-maybe.”

Concerning the lack of positive responses, Mosesson added, “It was not particularly difficult to understand…Avicii certainly was on a fantastic run right now.” “But why would a rock veteran like John Fogerty care about that? For these contented men, whose career peaks were at least twenty years behind them, Avicii was at best an obscure Swede with a summer hit.”

Even though this dream didn’t come true for Avicii, he still collaborated with several of the biggest names in 21st-century music. During his career, the DJ cut tracks with Lenny Kravitz, Rita Ora, Flo Rida, and Wyclef Jean.

Photo by Mike Pont/WireImage