Avicii: friends preserve legacy of late electronic dance music star by finishing off his last album

TIM album was on the mind of Swedish DJ-producer days before he died in 2018, and his family asked his musical team to complete the unfinished project for him

Imagine Dragons and Coldplay’s Chris Martin were among Avicii’s collaborators on the album, produced by Vargas & Lagola

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Swedish DJ-producer Avicii died in April, 2018. His final album TIM was completed by friends and collaborators.

Published: 10:00pm, 9 Jun 2019Updated: 10:47pm, 9 Jun 2019

Avicii was so invested and excited about his new album that even on his flight to Oman, where he later died, he was communicating with his producers about different sounds and melodies he wanted to include, and guest artists they should reach out to about collaborating.

The Swedish DJ-producer died on April 20, 2018, and months after his family asked Avicii’s musical team to complete the unfinished album. For production duo Vargas & Lagola, that wasn’t so easy.

“It was hard to just even open the computer and work on the songs,” says Salem Al Fakir, who goes by Lagola. “We opened [the computer] like six months after everything happened.”

“The family’s wish was to release the songs … and that helped us finish the songs,” he added. Thankfully because of multiple conversations, emails, text messages and more, Vargas & Lagola knew what Avicii wanted his new album to sound like, and felt they were headed in the right direction.

“We spent so much time with him in the last … three months before he passed,” Lagola says. “We knew how he wanted vocals,” added Vincent Pontare aka Vargas. “We’ve been working with him for so long. We know what he likes and what he don’t like.”