Just put the mix together.” Avicii remixed all 10 songs from the album and put a mix on SoundCloud. Then Ash said, “Maybe we can do a remix of it and put it out on SoundCloud.” And I said, “You can’t do that, because that’s not legal.”Īsh said, “But maybe if I do it…” And I was like, “I’m not involved in this, but yes, do it. What happened was that… we knew the music was great, but we couldn’t release it, because “Wake Me Up” was supposed to be out in mid-June. It was fantastic yesterday, it will be fantastic tomorrow.”ĭid the marketing plan for True change at all, after what happened at Ultra? I remember Andrew Kronfeld, who still is the Executive Vice President of Universal Music, was standing there with me and said, “Don’t worry, this is a fantastic album. He was like, “Am I wrong? Have I done something bad?” He just really didn’t understand the reactions.
So online it was terrible, like, “Rest in peace Avicii’s career.” It was really, really tough for him. They wanted traditional Avicii songs with big drops, and to just able to dance in their party mode, if I say so.
Then Dan Tyminski did “Hey Brother,” and no one understood. The DJ booth was moved to the right of the stage, and then came a guy who started singing “Wake Me Up.” For me, it was obvious, because I love the track. Then, for the audience it was like a changeover, like a new act coming on. So he first played an approximately 45-minutes set of a traditional Avicii concert. There, Avicii decided together with his management to premiere the album - with the original songwriters and topliners he worked with on the album. I invited people from all over the world to Ultra Music Festival. So you first hear “Wake Me Up” in February, and then a month later the album is being debuted at Ultra Music Festival in Miami. So when this album was in place, we went all in on it and just did everything we could. We did so well with “Levels,” and that really was a breakthrough for us, for me and for Universal Music Sweden, because that really ignited interest around the world for EDM music. I went back to the office and I called my superiors - because this was above my pay grade, because he asked for a lot of millions for this album - and talked about it. I tried to hold back, because if I say, “It’s fantastic,” then Ash would increase the price for the advance, so I had to hold back everything. You don’t do albums.”īut he told me that they were already working on it - so I went to Tim’s studio, which was just a five minutes walk from Universal’s Stockholm office - and they played me me “Wake Me Up.” This was in February of 2013. I want to do an album.” I said “You know, this is dance music. I don’t want to do one song instrumentals and this process. If the audience liked it, they called in a topliner or vocalist to write the lyrics, and tried different verses and different topliners.īut Tim was like, ‘I want to be an artist. At that time when I came into, everyone did instrumentals beats, and then they tested that on the audience.
really moved my career internationally and inside Universal. Tell me about the earliest phases of the album. Sundin - now the CEO of Pophouse, which purchased 75% of Avicii’s recording and publishing catalog in 2022 - here recalls the album’s origins to Billboard, along with the excitement for it within Universal, and how an unlicensed Soundcloud mix helped shift hatred for the LP into global acclaim. 13) marks the ten-year anniversary of True, which will be celebrated with never-before-released footage of the album’s production, released on the Avicii social media accounts over the next month. 5 on the Billboard 200 in October of 2013 and spent eight weeks at No. The album currently has two billion total on-demand official U.S. True was also a phenomenon: With it, Avicii bucked the trend of EDM artists only releasing singles, instead presenting a cohesive body of work that bore surprising country/bluegrass influences, which were at first misunderstood, but ultimately distinguished him as an innovator and world class creative. Dance music purists may have hated the track - when “Wake Me Up” was mentioned at a business lunch in 2013, one dance music publicist put her finger in her mouth and pretended to vomit - but anyone with ears had to admit it was catchy.
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