The Swedish DJ best known to the world as Avicii has died in Oman at the age of 28, per a release by his publicist.
If you’ve turned on the radio anytime in the past few years, you’ve probably heard an Avicii song at one point or another. Songs like “Wake Me Up” and “Lonely Together” have practically been inescapable at their peaks. However, according to Billboard, the DJ has now died.
The news has only just broken, so it’s unclear what happened to him. All the release that Billboard quotes says is that he was in Oman at the time. Additionally, it ends saying that there will be no further statements, meaning we may never know what exactly happened or the full details. What we do know is that he was not on tour at the time; as his website states, he stopped doing so in order to return to producing music.
During his career, he worked with artists like Aloe Blacc (for “Wake Me Up”), Rita Ora (for “Lonely Together”), Leona Lewis (for “Collide”) and Santana for a World Cup anthem in 2014. He had released two albums as well as an EP just last year. Last year, he had said that he was planning to work on at least an additional album as well as multiple EPs — presumably the music he had said he was working on in his announcement that he would no longer be touring.
While music fans know him best by Avicii, as Billboard reports, his real name was Tim Bergling, and he was just 28 years old at the time of his death.
In that same statement that Billboard quotes, his publicist asks that fans “respect the need privacy.”
At this time, Culturess’ thoughts are with his family, his fans and all those whose lives he touched in some way — whether it was by his personality or his music.