Avicii ended 2017 with a music video featuring sunny beaches and friends having fun together. It was, by all means, a feel-good video to end an eventful year. The EDM star was looking forward to a successful 2018 filled with more music.

So it came as a major shock to fans when Avicii took his own life at a ritzy estate in Oman owned by the country’s royal family.

Born Tim Bergling in Stockholm in 1989, Avicii took the music world by storm with his innovative and unconventional EDM tracks. His best-known track is the 2013 hit “Wake Me Up,” which had even the non-EDM fans spinning it for days. The blonde DJ described the song as a “fun experiment” when it was initially released. The song was so successful that YouTube was filled with aspiring guitarists making acoustic covers of “Wake Me Up.”

To most outsiders, the EDM DJ was a happy, baby-faced rising music star with a bright future ahead of him. His shocking death revealed a tragic, hidden side that fans were unaware of. Avicii released two back-to-back music videos at the turn of the year several months before his death: “Friend of Mine” and “You Be Love.” Like “Wake Me Up,” the tracks are catchy and bubbly on the outside, but a deeper look reveals something else entirely—a mind haunted by anxiety and sadness.

The official music video for “Friend of Mine” closely follows the bright and sunny youthful theme seen in “Wake Me Up,” but with a twist. The video opens with a group of co-ed friends hanging out in what seems like California in the sixties. Emotions are rife, as a couple glances at one another other with expressions of desire and doubt.

Then the video cuts back to modern times and focuses on an old man lying under harsh, sterile white lights. The atmosphere is in stark contrast to the warm glow the young people from the first half were bathed in. The viewer learns that the old man is the teen in the flashback scene.

He is shown married to the girl in the same scene. The couple who stared at each other with great uncertainty now has their own family. But the twist is that the old man has Alzheimer’s. His wife lingers by his side, reminiscing about the good old times.

The “Friend of Mine” music video is certainly heartwarming. It’s not unlike the sunny, beach-themed videos that usually accompany love ballads. But Avicii does bring out something deeper here: the fragility of memory and, ultimately, life. Such a dark theme is easily contrasted with the appearance of a normal life in the video.

For his other video released at around the same time, “You Be Love,” the Swede collaborated with the rock singer Billy Raffoul. The Rolling Stone Magazine called the accompanying music video “strikingly” minimalist. Just like “Friend of Mine,” “You Be Love,” is also a romantic song. But the music video couldn’t be more different.

There are no actors playing lovers in the “You Be Love” video. Instead, there are statues carefully placed to mimic two female lovers moving closer for a kiss. The statues of the lovers are surrounded by many others, pointedly featuring angry faces. The bystander statues move in on the lovers, as the color of the video turns crimson just as they kiss.

It’s not the happy, sunlight-filled video one would expect from such a song. But Avicii ones again showcases the darker emotions in life we try to ignore. These videos, perhaps unintentionally, illustrate the anxiety that accompanies positive emotions like love and portrays the reality of those suffering from depression and mood-related disorders.

Avicii himself was last seen in the documentary “Avicii: True Stories.” The haunting docudrama shows the EDM star in an interview where he is barely able to keep his eyes open. His face is pale and his cheeks, unshaven. Avicii states that he suffers from anxiety and that everyone knows it.

He also reveals his desire to stop DJ-ing and the pushback he gets from people who want him to continue. In this light, he is not very much unlike the statues in “You Be Mine,” going through the motions for other people’s sake. Like the video in “Friend of Mine,” Avicii’s life seemed promising and bright on the tabloids, but the truth was much bleaker.

Author Bio

Natalie Landecker is a musician, critic, and a professional guitarist. She contributes to a popular guitar blog. In her free time, Natalie composes her own songs on a well-used acoustic guitar.