Rise to Fame
He was 16 and teaching himself FL Studio on a pirated copy when he started posting remixes to online forums. 'Levels' in 2011 set off a six-figure label bidding war and ended with him charging at least $250,000 per gig. That's a steep arc. The 2013 album True took the experiment further: bluegrass and folk filtered through house music, and 'Wake Me Up' hit number one in over 20 countries and became the UK's fastest-selling single that year. He's one of the DJs who dragged electronic music out of the festival circuit and into pop radio, for better or worse.
In the Spotlight
His music still runs. 'Wake Me Up' crossed 3 billion Spotify streams, and the posthumous album Tim, assembled from unfinished sessions by collaborators, came out in 2019. His death became one of the more cited examples of what the touring circuit does to artists, and a Netflix documentary narrated by Bergling himself from archived interviews keeps the conversation going. He's now more symbol than musician, which is a strange fate for someone who retired from touring specifically to get back to making music.
Side Notes
The machine he built didn't suit him at all. He was deeply introverted in a career that demanded constant performance, and the 2017 documentary True Stories captures his management pressuring him to keep touring while he was visibly in trouble. He played 26 shows in 27 days in early 2012 and was hospitalized shortly after with acute pancreatitis. Between 2012 and 2014, he developed an opioid dependency from the pain medication he was prescribed. His final show was at Ushuaia Ibiza on August 28, 2016. The touring machine had already made the decision for him.
Final Chapter
His family held a public memorial at Hedvig Eleonora Church in Stockholm on November 16, 2018, with hundreds of fans in attendance and an orchestral performance of his music. The 61st Grammy Awards in February 2019 included a tribute. His family launched the Tim Bergling Foundation on March 26, 2019, focused on suicide prevention. A posthumous album, Tim, built from unfinished sessions with collaborators, was released on June 6, 2019.