Remembering Avicii, the Pop Innovator Who Led EDM Into the Mainstream

One of the most defining moments of Avicii’s too-brief career came at the 2012 Ultra Music Festival, when Madonna appeared on stage to introduce him and their first collaboration, 

“Girl Gone Wild.” That the queen of pop acknowledged the then-22-year-old Tim Bergling — who died Friday at the age of 28 of undisclosed causes — as a peer and a collaborator wasn’t just a watershed moment for him, it was one for dance music as well.But actually,

 a more telling moment in the Swedish superstar’s career came a year later, at Ultra in 2013, when he unveiled his new bluegrass-meets-electronic sound for the first time. Avicii opened his set with his signature hit, “Levels,” a blockbuster track that altered the face of EDM when it was first played at Ultra in 2011. But immediately afterward, Aloe Blacc took the stage to perform “Wake Me Up,” released just days earlier, live for the first time. 

When Blacc appeared, the crowd didn’t know what to think of fiddles and banjos onstage at an electronic music festival. He then went on to preview all of the songs that would make up his debut album, “True,” spotlighting folk singers Audra Mae and Dan Tyminski.