beats
and
pieces
Four years ago, he was just some
Swedish kid named Tim who liked
messing around on his laptop at home.
One iTunes-dominating dance hit
(“Levels”) later, he’s Avicii, world’s hottest
DJ, making $250,000 a night to keep
the Ecstasy-dosed, champagne-soaked
masses moving. Jessica Pressler spends
a wild week jetting around with Avicii
and his Oontz-a-Loompas, and nobody
stops partying until they’re rolled out in a
wheelchair
Tim Bergling is anxious. He is staring
straight ahead, so quiet that everyone with
him has gone silent, too, out of respect or
maybe a little fear. It was a crazy thing
to do, in retrospect, two shows in two
different cities, Anaheim and Las Vegas,
with only an hour and a half between
them. Even with the police escort and
the private plane. Now he is twenty-one
minutes late, and twenty-one minutes
matters when it’s the biggest party night
of the year, New Year’s Eve, in the biggest
party city in the world, Vegas, and you’re
the star of the show, scheduled to go on
at midnight, which was—Tim reaches into
the pocket of his jeans, barely held up by
a Gucci belt, and pulls out his phone to
check the time—twenty-two minutes ago.
“@Avicii better get to XS soon!!” some
douchebag is saying on Twitter. “People
paid money for this!” The doors slide
open, and Tim steps forward, purposeful
as a heart surgeon headed to perform a
triple bypass. His girlfriend, his booking
agent, his tour
15