In 2014, Swedish songwriter and producer Avicii cemented his place in the firmament of superstar recording artists/DJs with the success of his genre-defying debut album, True, on PRMD Records. The album not only satisfied the 25-year-old Swede’s restless creative urge to push musical boundaries, it also upped the ante on what dance music could be by blending the earthy sounds of folk, country, and bluegrass with soaring pop melodies, funky disco jams, and driving house beats. True spawned the 4x-platinum guitar-laden stomper “Wake Me Up,” which hit No. 1 in 81 countries and became the most-streamed song of all time on Spotify (over 300 million plays) and the No. 1 most Shazamed song worldwide, while racking up 2.6 billion international streams and 600 million combined YouTube views. Upon True’s release, The New York Times heralded Avicii as “an artist carrying today—and tomorrow—on his shoulders.”



Though Avicii (born Tim Bergling) was already a globally bankable DJ, thanks to the creative and marketing guidance of manager Ash Pournouri and his team at At Night and a string of hit dance singles like “Le7els,” “Bromance,” “Fade Into Darkness,” “I Could Be the One,” and the Grammy-nominated “Sunshine” with David Guetta, with True he telegraphed that he wasn’t content to churn out the same formula year after year. Having played to millions of jubilant fans at major festivals like Miami’s Ultra Music and Lollapalooza, and performing DJ sets at the world’s biggest clubs, Bergling has seen firsthand the benefit of daring his audience to go on a journey with him. So, when it came time to make his new album Stories, the only formula he followed was to remain unafraid to experiment.



“My mindset was just to keep going,” Bergling says of making Stories. “True was the beginning of my experimenting with different genres, and I got a lot out of it. Because I’ve done house music for so long, to be able to make rock songs and ballads, and explore reggae, blues and jazz, ye...