Avicii’s ‘Wake Me Up’ Reaches Three Billion Streams On Spotify
The 2013 Aloe Blacc collaboration is one of the most enduring hits in popular music history.
“Wake Me Up” just reached another huge milestone: Avicii’s 2013 mega-hit has surpassed 3 billion streams on Spotify. The Aloe Blacc collaboration, already established as one of the most enduring hits in popular music history, has now become the 51st track to cross the 3 billion streams threshold on the world’s biggest streaming platform.
Upon its release in 2013, “Wake Me Up” quickly emerged as an era-defining hit. The song was timely, merging the dominant EDM and folk-rock styles of the moment and topping charts around the world. But it has proven to have timeless appeal. In the U.K., it was the highest-charting dance track of the 2010s, while in the U.S. it landed on Billboard’s Decade-End Hot 100 list. In the 2020s, it has continued to be a streaming force.
Avicii and Aloe Blacc wrote “Wake Me Up” with Incubus guitarist Mike Einzinger, and Avicii co-produced it with Arash Pournouri. The track got its live debut in 2013 at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, with Avicii joined by a live band including Blacc, Einziger, and his Incubus bandmates Ben Kenney and José Pasillas. “Wake Me Up” served as the lead single for Avicii’s official debut studio album True, though it was by no means his introduction to the world. By 2013, he had already built a career as one of the world’s premier electronic producers and DJs thanks to hits like “Levels.”
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In an interview with MTV UK, Avicii told the story of the song’s genesis. “When I was with Mike Einziger from Incubus, we came up with the chord progression and the melody for ‘Wake Me Up!’ but no real lyrics,” he recalled. “None of us sing, and we really needed to get that demo down, and the only person I knew that lived in LA was Aloe, so I called him and he was free. Lyrics come really easy to him so he wrote them in a couple of hours and we finished the track.”
Blacc once explained to the Huffington Post that those lyrics stemmed from his amazement at the places his music career has taken him. “I started writing the lyrics at the top of 2013, travelling back from Switzerland,” Blacc said. “I started in hip hop music back in the 90s and I never expected to be singing and have an actual career as a musician, but I’m travelling all over the world and I thought, ‘Life is a dream, wake me up when it’s all over.’”
