“Tim Bergling, a shy and insecure boy, created one of the world’s loved artists – Avicii.”
Score: 9/10
tl,dr: incredible, nostalgic documentary with an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes footage covering the rise (& fall) of Avicii
I’m Tim follows the life and music of Tim Bergling, more commonly known as Avicii. If you don’t know who Avicii is, I’m actually impressed at how massive the rock you’re living under is. As a quick catchup that you won’t need before watching this: he’s Swedish, he made Levels / Wake Me Up / Hey Brother, sort of disappeared for a while after getting pancreatitis from drinking too much, and then ended up dying via suicide in Oman of all places in 2018. Spoiler: he’s dead. Now I, like I’m sure many of you, haven’t given much thought to Avicii other than firing up his music every once in a while to belt out the lyrics to Levels (dunna na dun dun dun , dunna dunna dunna da dun). Not sure what prompted this documentary to come out years after his passing, but don’t hate it.
First, I’m shocked at the amount of footage they had at their disposal to make this thing. There is footage of his entire life, starting with him as a newborn all the way up to him leaving for his fateful trip to Oman. There’s concert footage, behind-the-scenes footage from tour, working on new music in the studio, arm wrestling his father (dominant first name, Klas), etc. A few of my favorite parts:
- The creation of Wake Me Up involving Mike Einziger of Incubus and Aloe Blacc. Such an interesting look into how a casual riff from the guitar player in Incubus became the most listened to EDM song of all time. Just a couple of dudes hanging out in the studio, making music that slaps. “Hey we need some lyrics for this thing” “No problem, let me just call up Aloe Blacc and he’ll swing by” WIld.
- Dan Tyminski. Who’s Dan Tyminski? I had the same question. Just a relatively random bluegrass singer songwriter from Nashville. What does he do for Avicii? Not much just lay down the sweet vocals for Hey Brother. Him saying “I didn’t know who Avicii was or what EDM even was” and the story of asking his daughter if he should do it was hilarious.
- To my recollection I’ve never gone to an EDM festival like Ultra, but what a bunch of losers they were. Imagine being at the show where Avicii debuted the entirety of True with live performance from everyone he worked with and having your panties up your ass that there wasn’t enough pyrotechnics and lasers. Bet anyone who was there remembers it a little bit differently and talks about how sick it was after basically every song became a smash hit.
- Chris Martin may have the voice of an angel but is such a loser. “It came to me wherever songs come from” – give me a break.
Just an absolutely absurd list of people appearing in this thing:
- Aloe Blacc (go listen to “I Need a Dollar” – slaps)
- Mike Einziger (Incubus)
- Chris Martin (Coldplay)
- Dan Tyminski (Man of Constant Sorrow from O Brother Where Art Thou))
- Nile Rodgers (bunch of Daft Punk stuff)
- Earth Wind, and Fire
- Paul Simon (not in it but imaging a 70+ year old Paul Simon reaching out to Avicii to make music is hilarious in my head)
- John Fogerty (CCR)
- Wyclef Jean (people don’t forget you stole millions from Haiti earthquake relief funds)
- Jon Bon Jovi
- David Guetta
- Tiesto
- Alex Ebert (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes)
- I did imagine there was some level of revisionist history from a lot of the record company people and his buddy, Ash. I mean these are the people that were forcing him to tour to promote the music, come up with hits, etc. I’m not saying their implicit in his suicide, but the doc doesn’t really cover anything negative from this group of people.
Best Avicii music video: Seek Bromance.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/eWUC5Q0RCAA?si=F4CpkotJcxsmBrRR