August 19, 2025 • 23 mins
A young man rose from obscurity with melodies that lit up the world. His sound was luminous, his shows electric—yet behind the curtain, shadows followed close behind. Fame turned him into a product, a brand, an untouchable icon. But the truth was far more fragile: relentless pressure, sleepless nights, and a search for peace that always seemed out of reach. His story isn’t just about music—it’s about the cost of genius, the silence that success can bring, and a tragic ending no one saw coming. This is the beat that shook the world… and the darkness it left behind.
Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production
Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.
Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production
Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.
Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And welcome in. I'm Johnny Hartwell and this is Johnny's
Dead Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Here we go again,
diving into another story from music's dark side, a story
that was never supposed to end like this. The music
was too loud, the lights too bright. The world saw
(00:20):
the fireworks and the lasers and the screaming crowds packed
into sold out arenas. But in the shadows behind the
curtain was something else entirely a young man, brilliant, fragile,
and haunted. He carried melodies in his head, but also
the weight of the world on his shoulders. To fans,
he was a genius to the industry, a savior to
(00:41):
the brand. He was a product to be pushed harder,
faster and longer. But almost no one stopped to ask
what was it costing him, not until the silence came,
and by then it was too late. This is the
story of the Beat that shook the world and the
beautiful hell that followed. Script three, The beat that drops
(01:01):
at a beautiful help. Act one. You're there, not at
a festival, not on a plane, not in a recording
studio with a team of stylus and lighting texts you
were there though. Right there, in the stillness of a
modest bedroom, the wallpaper is old and fading. A single
lamp glows on his childhood desk. It's been on for days, weeks, maybe,
(01:26):
A collection of empty cans of energy drinks, litter, convenient spaces,
snack food wrappers tossed around the room. There's an unmade
bed pushed against the wall, a tangle of bed sheets,
like the mind of the boy who sleeps there. Only
in short bursts, you hear the click click click of
a mouse, the thump of a keyboard, the subtle hum
(01:47):
of an overworked laptop with one busted USB port, and
a fan that just won't shut up. In the middle
of it all, it's a boy, maybe sixteen seventeen, pale
skinned and sharp eyed, headphones two big for his head.
You hear nothing, but he hears, he hears everything. He
isn't trying to get rich, he isn't trying to be famous.
(02:09):
He just he's just chasing something he can't explain. The
city outside is sleeping, but not him. He's not watching movies,
not texting friends. He's building, not buildings or blueprints, not
even songs. Really, he's building worlds. He stacks samples like bricks.
He carves rhythms like sculpture, and somewhere in his head
(02:32):
there's a pulse, a quiet, little melody that won't leave
him alone until it's perfect, And even then he keeps tweaking.
This boy's name is Tim. Tim doesn't get out much,
doesn't party, doesn't care about grades. He used to play soccer,
but now when his friends kick a ball around or
(02:53):
chase girls, Tim is staring at waveforms, eq curves and
compressor thresholds. It's not an obsession. It's something deeper, compulsion.
His mother knocks softly sometimes, just to check and see
if he's alive. His older brother stops in now, and
then his brother loves music too, But there's no comparison.
(03:14):
Tim doesn't explain himself. He wouldn't know how to. How
do you explain that music feels like a secret language,
that he's the only one who hears it fluently. He
posts under fake names and uploads tracks into the void,
remixes that melt two songs into one, edits with layers.
Most people wouldn't even notice, but someone notices. First it's
(03:35):
a message, then two, then a repost, then a small
anonymous blog calls him promising. Then a DJ from Italy
plays his mix on an underground radio station, and then
a stranger says, hey, hey, do you have management? And
just like that, a quiet boy in a quiet room
feels a shift in the air. You're there, You're there
(03:58):
the moment it began to change, that moment, the glow
of his laptop screen became something else, a portal. You
could feel it in the charged silence of that bedroom,
like the whole room was holding its breath, like the
walls themselves knew this space was about to become too
small for what was coming at too. Next, when the
(04:23):
silence becomes a roar, at too, the ascent where the
silence becomes a roar. You weren't in the front row.
You didn't push your way forward or scream when the
countdown started. You stood just far enough back to see everything.
The atmosphere is thick. It smells like frat boys, young girls, perfume,
(04:46):
cheap beer, and sweat. The lights dimmed, the crowd surged,
People raised their phones like shields, and for a split second,
the air changed, charged with something electric, something almost sacred.
Then when you see him, he stepped onto the platform, slowly,
like his feet were entirely convinced. His head was down,
(05:08):
shoulders tight. One hand hovered over the mixer, the other
clenched just a little too long to be casual. The
crowd didn't notice, they were already chanting, already dancing. But
you did. You saw the way he paused just for
a breath, like a diver hesitating before a cliff chump,
wondering if the water below was real or just a reflection.
(05:31):
Then the lights hit him, blinding in white. The beat dropped,
and the moment took him. The moment took him whole.
But it didn't start that way. Long before he was
considered a DJ god. He was just just him, shy, reserved,
a perfectionist, the kind of kid who didn't just listen
(05:53):
to music, he dissected it and didn't dream of being famous.
He just wanted to be good, really really good. In
an early interview, Tim says, I always had a fear
of performing. I never really wanted to be in the spotlight.
But then came SoundCloud, MySpace, beatport, and one day a remix,
a remix that went viral, and just like that, the
(06:15):
inbox started filling up. Labels managers, promoters, But none of
them saw Tim. They saw crowds, they saw record sales,
they saw money, lots and lots of money. The bookings
come fast, small clubs at first, Copenhagen, Madrid, Antwerp, then
mid tier festivals, then the US. His name's on the
(06:36):
flyers now, but not the biggest font yet. But it's there. No,
it's not Tim. That's his name, Tim Burdling. That's a
name for tax forms and quiet boys, for someone who
listens more than he speaks. It wasn't a stage name,
it wasn't a headline name. It wasn't a name that
burned through stadium speakers. It was a name for someone
who could walk into the room and vanish. And for
(06:59):
a while that worked. He liked being invisible, like letting
the music do the talking. But the industry doesn't allow
ghosts to headline festivals. He needed a name, something people
could chant, something they'd remember. So he searched not for
something cool, not something edgy, but something honest, something that
(07:19):
felt like like truth. He ended up on a Buddhist forum,
an old thread about suffering rebirth in cycles, and there,
buried in a paragraph few would ever read, was a word,
one word, and it was perfect in Buddhism, this word
is the lowest level of naraka, the lowest level of hell,
(07:44):
the place of unrelenting suffering, where souls are reborn again
and again with no escape. This place is where you
go when you've burned every chance, when redemption is no
longer on the menu. He read it, reread it, and
then slowly, slowly typed it out A v I C
(08:06):
I I, a vichy with two eyes, because the first
spelling was already taken on MySpace. But even with the
extra letter, the meaning remained a name that meant eternal torment.
And why choose that? Because he didn't want to lie,
because something in him already knew what this would cost.
(08:28):
And in that moment, the boy named Tim died quietly
behind the screen, and someone else, someone louder, faster and brighter,
was born from that moment. Ford It wasn't Tim stepping
out on stage. It was a Vichy. A vichy got
the fans, a vic got the money, fame and awards,
A Vici got the headlines, the billboards, the brand deals,
and the screaming thousands. But Tim, Tim got whatever was left.
(08:53):
He would often talk about it how surreal it felt
to become something so many people claimed to love when
they never even really knew him. He once said, it's
weird people talk about a Vichy like it's a different person,
and I guess it kind of is. You're in a
green room and sal polo after the encore, after the lights,
he sits in silence, hands trembling, slightly, looking at himself
(09:17):
in a mirror, not to admire, but to check and
make sure there's still something behind the eyes. The door opens,
a handler shouts, Avichi, we need you back for photos.
He nods, nods in defeat, and without a word, he
stands up and leaves Tim. Tim in the chair. This
is the moment it became permanent. Tim wasn't the star.
(09:40):
A Vichy was. And it's hard to explain what it's
like when the world begins to love your mask more
than your face. Harder still, when the mask becomes the
only thing they let you wear. He's still the same kid,
same messy hair, same tired hoodie. But something is changing Suddenly.
There's entourages schedule a new city every night, no time zones,
(10:02):
just time slots. His manager handles the logistics, his team
handles the rest. All he has to do is show up, play, smile, repeat, simple,
Except it's not. Avici has the midas touched songs like
Levels and Silhouettes and wake Me Up and hey brother.
Everything he touched turned to fire, But it was Tim
(10:23):
that was getting burned, burned up and burned out. He's
on a flight to Tokyo, three am, somewhere over Siberia.
Everyone else asleep or sedated except him. He's in the
window seat, hoodie up, tray, table down, laptop open. The
screen glows faintly as he edits a kick drum for
the forty eighth time. He's not tired, he's not hungry.
(10:46):
He's wired, and somehow that rhythm in his head just
won't settle. The sets get longer, the crowds get louder.
What began in a bedroom in Sweden is now bouncing
off the walls of nightclub in Vegas and Dubai and Barcelona.
Somewhere along the way, he becomes the face of a movement.
He doesn't just play electronic music, he evolves it. He
(11:10):
starts bending genres like metal, mixing acoustic guitar with pulsing synth,
folk vocals with four on the floor beach. No one
else is doing it, and everyone is trying to copy him.
The crowd loves it, so do the sponsors. He's no
longer a DJ, He's a brand. But here's the thing
they don't see. He never planned for this. He never
(11:31):
thought about what it would be like to be in
a hotel room so high up you can't open the window,
or how it feels when the applause dies and you're
left alone in a lonely dressing room with nothing but silence.
He never thought about interviews or red carpets, or about
what happens when your identity becomes a mask, one that
thousands of people now expect you to wear every single night.
(11:54):
It's another beautiful day in Abiza. The backstage area smells
like sweat and citrus. The road crew swarms the staging
area like ants. Someone's yelling about a delayed pyroque, a
promoter is waving a contract and grinning like a wolf.
And him he's on a couch, slumped, hoodie over his eyes,
earbuds in, trying to hold onto a fragment of normalcy
(12:16):
before stepping into another spotlight. His team thinks he's resting,
but he's not. He's editing, always, editing always. He starts
to feel the pull between who he was and who
he's supposed to be now. At one point, he tries
to slow down. He asks for fewer dates. He wants
(12:36):
time to rest, He wants to breathe, but rest doesn't pay.
Breathing isn't billable. The machine is moving now, and it's
bigger than him. It's bigger than Tim. It's too late
to stop it, so he plays on. It's New York,
the Big Apple. The crowd chants his name. The lights
go out, and in the green room he vomits quietly
(12:59):
into a trash can. No one sees it, no one
wants to. They hand him a water bottle, a towe,
and a smile. He smiles back, but it's the mask
that smiles, not Tim. Act four, Trouble in Paradise cracks
in the mask next Act four. By now, the name
(13:26):
Avichi is too big to fail, too profitable, too recognizable.
He was a face of a generation, a cultural icon,
a poster boy for a global phenomenon that didn't sleep,
didn't slow down, and did not stop. Behind the scenes,
though Tim was unraveling, his symptoms showed up quietly. At
first he stopped eating. He'd lose weight, then gain it back,
(13:48):
then lose it again. He'd wake up with his jaw
clenched so tight he wouldn't speak till noon. Some nights
the insomnia was so bad he would stare at the
ceiling for eight hours straight, convinced that if he stopped thinking,
even for a moment, the fear would crash in like
a wave. And then there was the pain, real pain.
His stomach started revolting. At first they called it stress,
(14:11):
then diet. Eventually he was rushed to the hospital pancreatitis,
and he's just twenty one. The doctor said it was
from drinking too much, and that was true. He started
drinking just to get through shows, one or two to
take the edge off, then three, then five, then whatever
it took to drown out the anxiety and convince the
body to keep on dancing. Then came the gallbladder removed.
(14:35):
Then came the warning, if you don't slow down, something
worse is coming. He tried, God, he tried, He canceled shows,
he took breaks. But break doesn't mean rest. It means
more pressure, more questions. It meant when's the album coming out?
Why haven't you posted? Why weren't you at the after party?
(14:55):
The hotel suite was expensive, but airless, like a cage
lined in velvet. The curtains were drawn tight, shutting out
the Miami glare that could bleach a man's bones. The
lamp threw weak yellow light across furniture that looked too
heavy to be moved. An untouched tray of room service
sat at the table, the silver lids collecting condensation, The
(15:16):
smell of cold steak and wilted parsley drifting faintly in
the air. On the couch, he's curled in on himself,
one hand pressing against his stomach, as if to keep
something inside from tearing loose. His phone buzzed on the
glass coffee table. It's green, lighting up like a pulse.
He didn't want to acknowledge. A doctor sat nearby, voice low, steady.
(15:37):
Clinical words like acute inflammation and rest floated in thick silence,
medical phrases that sounded more like warnings than advice. Then
three quick knocks at the door, too sharp to ignore.
Another suit, another executive, another request that would demand his smile,
his presence, his body. He didn't even look up. He
(16:00):
just let his eyes slye shut and whispered, almost too
softly to hear tell him I'm asleep, But he wasn't.
He was wide awake, inside a body that had become
an alarm system. Every sound, every crowd, every flashball became
another flare. And the worst part, no one believed him.
(16:20):
They thought he was difficult, or lazy, or spoiled. They
whispered about ego, about fame getting to his head, but
the truth was simpler. He was in pain, and no
one knew how to let him stop. He began meditating, reading, isolating.
He tried yoga, therapy, clean eating retreats, but nothing stuck.
(16:43):
Because when your famous rest looks like weakness, and when
your persona is your income, your suffering becomes a liability.
He once said, I was stuck in a cycle. Play
get sick, Cancel, feel guilty, play again. That cycle killed him.
In twenty sixteen, he made the only choice that still
(17:04):
felt like his. He quit a simple Instagram post, simple
direct I've decided this twenty sixteen tour will be my last.
Fans were shocked, the industry panicked. His team tried to
talk him out of it, but he did not budge.
He walked away from it. All the stage, the lights,
(17:25):
the chaos. It's the final show. The crowd was euphoric,
the lights were blinding, and somewhere behind the smoke and lasers,
a man stood alone behind the next, smiling like a prisoner,
watching the gates open. And when it was over, he
didn't wait for the applause to die down. He just
walked off stage and did not look back. But another
(17:46):
circle of hell awaits at five is next at five?
He thought walking away would fix it. He believed that
if he stopped performing, the noise would stop too, the panic,
the insomnia, the ever throbbing expectation that pressed against his
(18:10):
chest like a hand. But leaving the stage didn't end
the pressure, It only changed its shape. You remember hearing
he was in Oman. He wasn't promoting anything. There was
no new release, no live stream, no branded hashtag. Far
from the spotlight, off the grid, a quiet villa outside
of moscont stone walls bleached pale by the sun. A
(18:33):
courtyard with hand laid tiles still warm from the day.
A fig tree growing sideways over a bench heavy with fruit.
The air dry and slow, but even the wind was
trying not to disturb him, that desert kind of stillness
where the silence has weight. You pictured him barefoot walking
that garden path in the late afternoon, shirt loose, shoulders soft,
(18:57):
not escaping, just observing, stopping to pick up a fallen leaf,
Sitting cross legged in the shade with his journal, listening
to the wind moved through the palm fronds the way
he used to listen to melodies before they existed, And
maybe for a moment he finally felt okay. He hadn't
cried in days, and that was unusual. He'd been journaling
(19:19):
a lot more than usual, asking hard questions, writing about
dissolving the self, about suffering as currency, about whether you
could trade pain for peace, whether silence was the only
kind of freedom left, And that afternoon, in the quiet
of his rented villa, something inside him decided the question
had been answered. There was a bottle of wine on
(19:42):
the table. He hadn't touched it the night before. He
wasn't drinking much lately, not like before, But that night
he picked it up, studied it, not for the wine
but the weight. He sat down on the tiled floor
in the bathroom, cool stone, a towel under him, full
carefully his journal opened beside him, one last page, still blank,
(20:06):
and slowly, deliberately, he broke the bottle against the corner
of the tub. Not fast, not violently, just enough. He
held a piece of glass for a long time, not shaking,
not in a frenzy, just still. He traced the edge
with his finger, then held it over his wrist, his forearm.
(20:30):
Not dramatically, not like a movie, just a man who
had been in pain for so long He needed to
know if silence might feel better. Did he want to die?
Maybe not in the way most people mean. Maybe he
just wanted the pain to die, the shame, the weight,
the static. Maybe it wasn't death he was chasing. Maybe
(20:53):
it was feeling something real for the first time in years.
Or maybe just maybe it was about feeling nothing at all.
The epilogue echoes through the static. Next Act six epilogue.
(21:15):
They tried to summarize him after electric music, pioneer, genre, defying, visionary,
festival icon, but none of it fit because none of
it explained why it hurt when he left. The truth is,
he wasn't just a musician. He was a frequency, a
signal buried in the static of modern life that somehow
(21:36):
cut through. He made music for people who felt too
much and said too little, for people who couldn't sleep,
for people who danced to forget, for people who stood
still just to feel something. He didn't build an empire,
he built moments. You won't remember every song, but you'll
remember how it felt that one night in the car,
(21:59):
once on the roof, the one heartbreak. You didn't think
you survived, but somehow you did because a voice said,
just one more song. You're there. It's the tribute concert,
sixty thousand people. But it was quiet at first. Then
a piano played three notes, then the lights came on,
and then without needing to say his name, everyone sang
(22:23):
it back to the sky. The Tim Birdling Foundation lives on.
They fight for those who feel too much. They fund
research in suicide prevention. They support organizations focused on youth
mental health and emotional education. Because if there's one thing
Tim's story taught us, it's that sensitivity isn't weakness, It's
(22:45):
a language. And maybe if we had listened sooner, we'd
still be listening now. And in the end, all he
asked for was quiet, So now we give it to him.
Rest easy, Tim, I hope you enjoyed the beat, drops
(23:06):
and a beautiful hell. This has been Johnny's Dead Air
podcast Script three. I'm Johnny Heartwell, thank you so much
for listening.
And welcome in. I'm Johnny Hartwell and this is Johnny's
Dead Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Here we go again,
diving into another story from music's dark side, a story
that was never supposed to end like this. The music
was too loud, the lights too bright. The world saw
(00:20):
the fireworks and the lasers and the screaming crowds packed
into sold out arenas. But in the shadows behind the
curtain was something else entirely a young man, brilliant, fragile,
and haunted. He carried melodies in his head, but also
the weight of the world on his shoulders. To fans,
he was a genius to the industry, a savior to
(00:41):
the brand. He was a product to be pushed harder,
faster and longer. But almost no one stopped to ask
what was it costing him, not until the silence came,
and by then it was too late. This is the
story of the Beat that shook the world and the
beautiful hell that followed. Script three, The beat that drops
(01:01):
at a beautiful help. Act one. You're there, not at
a festival, not on a plane, not in a recording
studio with a team of stylus and lighting texts you
were there though. Right there, in the stillness of a
modest bedroom, the wallpaper is old and fading. A single
lamp glows on his childhood desk. It's been on for days, weeks, maybe,
(01:26):
A collection of empty cans of energy drinks, litter, convenient spaces,
snack food wrappers tossed around the room. There's an unmade
bed pushed against the wall, a tangle of bed sheets,
like the mind of the boy who sleeps there. Only
in short bursts, you hear the click click click of
a mouse, the thump of a keyboard, the subtle hum
(01:47):
of an overworked laptop with one busted USB port, and
a fan that just won't shut up. In the middle
of it all, it's a boy, maybe sixteen seventeen, pale
skinned and sharp eyed, headphones two big for his head.
You hear nothing, but he hears, he hears everything. He
isn't trying to get rich, he isn't trying to be famous.
(02:09):
He just he's just chasing something he can't explain. The
city outside is sleeping, but not him. He's not watching movies,
not texting friends. He's building, not buildings or blueprints, not
even songs. Really, he's building worlds. He stacks samples like bricks.
He carves rhythms like sculpture, and somewhere in his head
(02:32):
there's a pulse, a quiet, little melody that won't leave
him alone until it's perfect, And even then he keeps tweaking.
This boy's name is Tim. Tim doesn't get out much,
doesn't party, doesn't care about grades. He used to play soccer,
but now when his friends kick a ball around or
(02:53):
chase girls, Tim is staring at waveforms, eq curves and
compressor thresholds. It's not an obsession. It's something deeper, compulsion.
His mother knocks softly sometimes, just to check and see
if he's alive. His older brother stops in now, and
then his brother loves music too, But there's no comparison.
(03:14):
Tim doesn't explain himself. He wouldn't know how to. How
do you explain that music feels like a secret language,
that he's the only one who hears it fluently. He
posts under fake names and uploads tracks into the void,
remixes that melt two songs into one, edits with layers.
Most people wouldn't even notice, but someone notices. First it's
(03:35):
a message, then two, then a repost, then a small
anonymous blog calls him promising. Then a DJ from Italy
plays his mix on an underground radio station, and then
a stranger says, hey, hey, do you have management? And
just like that, a quiet boy in a quiet room
feels a shift in the air. You're there, You're there
(03:58):
the moment it began to change, that moment, the glow
of his laptop screen became something else, a portal. You
could feel it in the charged silence of that bedroom,
like the whole room was holding its breath, like the
walls themselves knew this space was about to become too
small for what was coming at too. Next, when the
(04:23):
silence becomes a roar, at too, the ascent where the
silence becomes a roar. You weren't in the front row.
You didn't push your way forward or scream when the
countdown started. You stood just far enough back to see everything.
The atmosphere is thick. It smells like frat boys, young girls, perfume,
(04:46):
cheap beer, and sweat. The lights dimmed, the crowd surged,
People raised their phones like shields, and for a split second,
the air changed, charged with something electric, something almost sacred.
Then when you see him, he stepped onto the platform, slowly,
like his feet were entirely convinced. His head was down,
(05:08):
shoulders tight. One hand hovered over the mixer, the other
clenched just a little too long to be casual. The
crowd didn't notice, they were already chanting, already dancing. But
you did. You saw the way he paused just for
a breath, like a diver hesitating before a cliff chump,
wondering if the water below was real or just a reflection.
(05:31):
Then the lights hit him, blinding in white. The beat dropped,
and the moment took him. The moment took him whole.
But it didn't start that way. Long before he was
considered a DJ god. He was just just him, shy, reserved,
a perfectionist, the kind of kid who didn't just listen
(05:53):
to music, he dissected it and didn't dream of being famous.
He just wanted to be good, really really good. In
an early interview, Tim says, I always had a fear
of performing. I never really wanted to be in the spotlight.
But then came SoundCloud, MySpace, beatport, and one day a remix,
a remix that went viral, and just like that, the
(06:15):
inbox started filling up. Labels managers, promoters, But none of
them saw Tim. They saw crowds, they saw record sales,
they saw money, lots and lots of money. The bookings
come fast, small clubs at first, Copenhagen, Madrid, Antwerp, then
mid tier festivals, then the US. His name's on the
(06:36):
flyers now, but not the biggest font yet. But it's there. No,
it's not Tim. That's his name, Tim Burdling. That's a
name for tax forms and quiet boys, for someone who
listens more than he speaks. It wasn't a stage name,
it wasn't a headline name. It wasn't a name that
burned through stadium speakers. It was a name for someone
who could walk into the room and vanish. And for
(06:59):
a while that worked. He liked being invisible, like letting
the music do the talking. But the industry doesn't allow
ghosts to headline festivals. He needed a name, something people
could chant, something they'd remember. So he searched not for
something cool, not something edgy, but something honest, something that
(07:19):
felt like like truth. He ended up on a Buddhist forum,
an old thread about suffering rebirth in cycles, and there,
buried in a paragraph few would ever read, was a word,
one word, and it was perfect in Buddhism, this word
is the lowest level of naraka, the lowest level of hell,
(07:44):
the place of unrelenting suffering, where souls are reborn again
and again with no escape. This place is where you
go when you've burned every chance, when redemption is no
longer on the menu. He read it, reread it, and
then slowly, slowly typed it out A v I C
(08:06):
I I, a vichy with two eyes, because the first
spelling was already taken on MySpace. But even with the
extra letter, the meaning remained a name that meant eternal torment.
And why choose that? Because he didn't want to lie,
because something in him already knew what this would cost.
(08:28):
And in that moment, the boy named Tim died quietly
behind the screen, and someone else, someone louder, faster and brighter,
was born from that moment. Ford It wasn't Tim stepping
out on stage. It was a Vichy. A vichy got
the fans, a vic got the money, fame and awards,
A Vici got the headlines, the billboards, the brand deals,
and the screaming thousands. But Tim, Tim got whatever was left.
(08:53):
He would often talk about it how surreal it felt
to become something so many people claimed to love when
they never even really knew him. He once said, it's
weird people talk about a Vichy like it's a different person,
and I guess it kind of is. You're in a
green room and sal polo after the encore, after the lights,
he sits in silence, hands trembling, slightly, looking at himself
(09:17):
in a mirror, not to admire, but to check and
make sure there's still something behind the eyes. The door opens,
a handler shouts, Avichi, we need you back for photos.
He nods, nods in defeat, and without a word, he
stands up and leaves Tim. Tim in the chair. This
is the moment it became permanent. Tim wasn't the star.
(09:40):
A Vichy was. And it's hard to explain what it's
like when the world begins to love your mask more
than your face. Harder still, when the mask becomes the
only thing they let you wear. He's still the same kid,
same messy hair, same tired hoodie. But something is changing Suddenly.
There's entourages schedule a new city every night, no time zones,
(10:02):
just time slots. His manager handles the logistics, his team
handles the rest. All he has to do is show up, play, smile, repeat, simple,
Except it's not. Avici has the midas touched songs like
Levels and Silhouettes and wake Me Up and hey brother.
Everything he touched turned to fire, But it was Tim
(10:23):
that was getting burned, burned up and burned out. He's
on a flight to Tokyo, three am, somewhere over Siberia.
Everyone else asleep or sedated except him. He's in the
window seat, hoodie up, tray, table down, laptop open. The
screen glows faintly as he edits a kick drum for
the forty eighth time. He's not tired, he's not hungry.
(10:46):
He's wired, and somehow that rhythm in his head just
won't settle. The sets get longer, the crowds get louder.
What began in a bedroom in Sweden is now bouncing
off the walls of nightclub in Vegas and Dubai and Barcelona.
Somewhere along the way, he becomes the face of a movement.
He doesn't just play electronic music, he evolves it. He
(11:10):
starts bending genres like metal, mixing acoustic guitar with pulsing synth,
folk vocals with four on the floor beach. No one
else is doing it, and everyone is trying to copy him.
The crowd loves it, so do the sponsors. He's no
longer a DJ, He's a brand. But here's the thing
they don't see. He never planned for this. He never
(11:31):
thought about what it would be like to be in
a hotel room so high up you can't open the window,
or how it feels when the applause dies and you're
left alone in a lonely dressing room with nothing but silence.
He never thought about interviews or red carpets, or about
what happens when your identity becomes a mask, one that
thousands of people now expect you to wear every single night.
(11:54):
It's another beautiful day in Abiza. The backstage area smells
like sweat and citrus. The road crew swarms the staging
area like ants. Someone's yelling about a delayed pyroque, a
promoter is waving a contract and grinning like a wolf.
And him he's on a couch, slumped, hoodie over his eyes,
earbuds in, trying to hold onto a fragment of normalcy
(12:16):
before stepping into another spotlight. His team thinks he's resting,
but he's not. He's editing, always, editing always. He starts
to feel the pull between who he was and who
he's supposed to be now. At one point, he tries
to slow down. He asks for fewer dates. He wants
(12:36):
time to rest, He wants to breathe, but rest doesn't pay.
Breathing isn't billable. The machine is moving now, and it's
bigger than him. It's bigger than Tim. It's too late
to stop it, so he plays on. It's New York,
the Big Apple. The crowd chants his name. The lights
go out, and in the green room he vomits quietly
(12:59):
into a trash can. No one sees it, no one
wants to. They hand him a water bottle, a towe,
and a smile. He smiles back, but it's the mask
that smiles, not Tim. Act four, Trouble in Paradise cracks
in the mask next Act four. By now, the name
(13:26):
Avichi is too big to fail, too profitable, too recognizable.
He was a face of a generation, a cultural icon,
a poster boy for a global phenomenon that didn't sleep,
didn't slow down, and did not stop. Behind the scenes,
though Tim was unraveling, his symptoms showed up quietly. At
first he stopped eating. He'd lose weight, then gain it back,
(13:48):
then lose it again. He'd wake up with his jaw
clenched so tight he wouldn't speak till noon. Some nights
the insomnia was so bad he would stare at the
ceiling for eight hours straight, convinced that if he stopped thinking,
even for a moment, the fear would crash in like
a wave. And then there was the pain, real pain.
His stomach started revolting. At first they called it stress,
(14:11):
then diet. Eventually he was rushed to the hospital pancreatitis,
and he's just twenty one. The doctor said it was
from drinking too much, and that was true. He started
drinking just to get through shows, one or two to
take the edge off, then three, then five, then whatever
it took to drown out the anxiety and convince the
body to keep on dancing. Then came the gallbladder removed.
(14:35):
Then came the warning, if you don't slow down, something
worse is coming. He tried, God, he tried, He canceled shows,
he took breaks. But break doesn't mean rest. It means
more pressure, more questions. It meant when's the album coming out?
Why haven't you posted? Why weren't you at the after party?
(14:55):
The hotel suite was expensive, but airless, like a cage
lined in velvet. The curtains were drawn tight, shutting out
the Miami glare that could bleach a man's bones. The
lamp threw weak yellow light across furniture that looked too
heavy to be moved. An untouched tray of room service
sat at the table, the silver lids collecting condensation, The
(15:16):
smell of cold steak and wilted parsley drifting faintly in
the air. On the couch, he's curled in on himself,
one hand pressing against his stomach, as if to keep
something inside from tearing loose. His phone buzzed on the
glass coffee table. It's green, lighting up like a pulse.
He didn't want to acknowledge. A doctor sat nearby, voice low, steady.
(15:37):
Clinical words like acute inflammation and rest floated in thick silence,
medical phrases that sounded more like warnings than advice. Then
three quick knocks at the door, too sharp to ignore.
Another suit, another executive, another request that would demand his smile,
his presence, his body. He didn't even look up. He
(16:00):
just let his eyes slye shut and whispered, almost too
softly to hear tell him I'm asleep, But he wasn't.
He was wide awake, inside a body that had become
an alarm system. Every sound, every crowd, every flashball became
another flare. And the worst part, no one believed him.
(16:20):
They thought he was difficult, or lazy, or spoiled. They
whispered about ego, about fame getting to his head, but
the truth was simpler. He was in pain, and no
one knew how to let him stop. He began meditating, reading, isolating.
He tried yoga, therapy, clean eating retreats, but nothing stuck.
(16:43):
Because when your famous rest looks like weakness, and when
your persona is your income, your suffering becomes a liability.
He once said, I was stuck in a cycle. Play
get sick, Cancel, feel guilty, play again. That cycle killed him.
In twenty sixteen, he made the only choice that still
(17:04):
felt like his. He quit a simple Instagram post, simple
direct I've decided this twenty sixteen tour will be my last.
Fans were shocked, the industry panicked. His team tried to
talk him out of it, but he did not budge.
He walked away from it. All the stage, the lights,
(17:25):
the chaos. It's the final show. The crowd was euphoric,
the lights were blinding, and somewhere behind the smoke and lasers,
a man stood alone behind the next, smiling like a prisoner,
watching the gates open. And when it was over, he
didn't wait for the applause to die down. He just
walked off stage and did not look back. But another
(17:46):
circle of hell awaits at five is next at five?
He thought walking away would fix it. He believed that
if he stopped performing, the noise would stop too, the panic,
the insomnia, the ever throbbing expectation that pressed against his
(18:10):
chest like a hand. But leaving the stage didn't end
the pressure, It only changed its shape. You remember hearing
he was in Oman. He wasn't promoting anything. There was
no new release, no live stream, no branded hashtag. Far
from the spotlight, off the grid, a quiet villa outside
of moscont stone walls bleached pale by the sun. A
(18:33):
courtyard with hand laid tiles still warm from the day.
A fig tree growing sideways over a bench heavy with fruit.
The air dry and slow, but even the wind was
trying not to disturb him, that desert kind of stillness
where the silence has weight. You pictured him barefoot walking
that garden path in the late afternoon, shirt loose, shoulders soft,
(18:57):
not escaping, just observing, stopping to pick up a fallen leaf,
Sitting cross legged in the shade with his journal, listening
to the wind moved through the palm fronds the way
he used to listen to melodies before they existed, And
maybe for a moment he finally felt okay. He hadn't
cried in days, and that was unusual. He'd been journaling
(19:19):
a lot more than usual, asking hard questions, writing about
dissolving the self, about suffering as currency, about whether you
could trade pain for peace, whether silence was the only
kind of freedom left, And that afternoon, in the quiet
of his rented villa, something inside him decided the question
had been answered. There was a bottle of wine on
(19:42):
the table. He hadn't touched it the night before. He
wasn't drinking much lately, not like before, But that night
he picked it up, studied it, not for the wine
but the weight. He sat down on the tiled floor
in the bathroom, cool stone, a towel under him, full
carefully his journal opened beside him, one last page, still blank,
(20:06):
and slowly, deliberately, he broke the bottle against the corner
of the tub. Not fast, not violently, just enough. He
held a piece of glass for a long time, not shaking,
not in a frenzy, just still. He traced the edge
with his finger, then held it over his wrist, his forearm.
(20:30):
Not dramatically, not like a movie, just a man who
had been in pain for so long He needed to
know if silence might feel better. Did he want to die?
Maybe not in the way most people mean. Maybe he
just wanted the pain to die, the shame, the weight,
the static. Maybe it wasn't death he was chasing. Maybe
(20:53):
it was feeling something real for the first time in years.
Or maybe just maybe it was about feeling nothing at all.
The epilogue echoes through the static. Next Act six epilogue.
(21:15):
They tried to summarize him after electric music, pioneer, genre, defying, visionary,
festival icon, but none of it fit because none of
it explained why it hurt when he left. The truth is,
he wasn't just a musician. He was a frequency, a
signal buried in the static of modern life that somehow
(21:36):
cut through. He made music for people who felt too
much and said too little, for people who couldn't sleep,
for people who danced to forget, for people who stood
still just to feel something. He didn't build an empire,
he built moments. You won't remember every song, but you'll
remember how it felt that one night in the car,
(21:59):
once on the roof, the one heartbreak. You didn't think
you survived, but somehow you did because a voice said,
just one more song. You're there. It's the tribute concert,
sixty thousand people. But it was quiet at first. Then
a piano played three notes, then the lights came on,
and then without needing to say his name, everyone sang
(22:23):
it back to the sky. The Tim Birdling Foundation lives on.
They fight for those who feel too much. They fund
research in suicide prevention. They support organizations focused on youth
mental health and emotional education. Because if there's one thing
Tim's story taught us, it's that sensitivity isn't weakness, It's
(22:45):
a language. And maybe if we had listened sooner, we'd
still be listening now. And in the end, all he
asked for was quiet, So now we give it to him.
Rest easy, Tim, I hope you enjoyed the beat, drops
(23:06):
and a beautiful hell. This has been Johnny's Dead Air
podcast Script three. I'm Johnny Heartwell, thank you so much
for listening.
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