Armin van Buuren: ‘Avicii’s death is a wake up call for all of us’

Armin van Buuren has called for Avicii’s death to act as “a wake up call” for the dance music industry.

Speaking about the late Swedish EDM megastar’s death in a new interview on Sirius XM, Armin talked about the pressures on electronic music’s biggest stars.

”Every DJ, no matter how big or how small, deals with a certain amount of insecurities,“ he said. “The pressure can be huge. Every artist is a perfectionist. We all read everything that is being said about us. That is the truth.

“But if you do your best, then that’s the best you can do. If you can tell yourself, ‘I worked hard on this DJ set, I worked hard on this production, I invested all my time and effort into it’, then that is the best you can do. I guess Tim couldn’t deal with that, in a way.

“He was always insecure and that’s terrible if you’re that insecure that you need alcohol to do a performance on stage. I guess everybody deals with it differently and I’m sad that Tim had a hard time dealing with it.”

Armin then concluded that he hopes artists take heed of Avicii’s recent death.

“I think it’s also a wake-up call for all DJs in the world,” he said. “You know, stand up and see that this must never happen again.”

Last week (26th April), Avicii’s family released a new statement, implying that the EDM star died by suicide. That came after their message of thanks to fans around the world for the outpourings of love and support that followed when news broke of his death on Friday 20th April.

Geffen Records president Neil Jacobson, who worked closely with Avicii, also revealed the material the late Swedish producer was writing for his forthcoming album is “his best music in years” last week (23rd April).