Levels: Occupy Music

Originally written March 25, 2023; unpublished until July 2023 with minor changes

In the years following the 2008 American recession, a number of movements took hold, all trying to express distrust and distaste in the decisions that were impacting so many lives. People wanted an outlet. In the years that followed, a single word came to exemplify this idea: occupy. Although ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is probably the most memorable slogan, there were movements to occupy various institutions, corporations, and governments all across the world. People from East Asia to South America were participating in the push for freedom of expression because they were feeling things and they wanted to make it known. Tensions certainly couldn’t have been helped by the wild theories circulating that the world was going to end in 2012. Those sorts of ideas tend to lead to additional panic and generally unhappy people.

Tim Bergling, better known as Swedish producer Avicii, would have been coming into adulthood right as the world markets tanked, so despite not being American, he was probably used to the constant fear, anger and resentment of the time. To respond to that sort of environment with such sheer optimism is unthinkable. There is no reason that anyone understanding the stakes of everything should have made “Levels”, let alone anyone else relate to it. But maybe people were tired of being mad and wanted to express themselves in ways that felt good for once. Maybe Avicii wanted to feel good for once.

EDM was another outlet for all the pent-up energy. It was dancing, moving, and existing only for the moment, without any concern for the perils of the future or the issues of the past. It provided a way to rage against the machine simply through forgetting that the machine was even there. It wasn’t new, but it was fun. Despite electronic music existing for decades, it didn’t really hit mainstream popularity until the 2010s. Almost overnight there were bajillions of festivals, dubstep in diaper commercials, and crossovers between mainstream artists like Justin Bieber with the likes of Skrillex and Diplo. EDM was a freeing, youthful movement that celebrated being alive.

That’s what “Levels”, Avicii’s breakthrough hit, was. The success of the song was many people’s first introduction to the genre. The most popular version of the song featured a re-work of a line from the Etta James song "Something's Got a Hold On Me”. It was the first time in a while that a lot of people had let themselves “get a good feeling” and just enjoy life, no matter what the powers of the world were constantly breaking around them. This was a change that people needed, and he was the spark that launched the 2010’s EDM explosion.

Arguably, Avicii was to EDM what Nirvana was for grunge in the 90’s. A new hit sound took the youth culture by storm, dominated pop music and culture for several years before an unfortunate suicide cut the life of a star short and left a community hurting. Comparing Bergling to Kurt Cobain might seem borderline sacrilegious among the music community, but I think the only reason that it isn’t more apparent is because EDM had already begun to decline before Bergling’s passing. Like Cobain, he was far from the only artist in his lane and probably wasn’t even the best at it, but he was a face for so many youths who needed someone else who felt them. He was one of the biggest faces in his genre and provided a voice for a generation through songs like “The Nights”, “Hey Brother”, and “Wake Me Up”. His struggle with mental health was very public (akin to Cobain’s fight), and it caused him to pull away from touring and the public eye (not unlike Cobain’s rehab time). His untimely death marked the end of EDM’s heyday, just as Cobain’s denoted the end of grunge’s and signaled that the times had changed once again. Pop music once again took a darker turn, as it’s impossible to live in perpetual ignorant bliss.

Almost as fast as EDM swarmed the cultural consciousness, it left it. By 2018, pop and EDM were no longer married to one another, and the electronic music scene returned to the relative underground spot it had previously resided. However, for many, “Levels” is still the embodiment of angst and frustration turned to a more hopeful outlook. For many, it’s still worthwhile sometimes to try and catch that “good feeling”.

Note: This was an assignment in my Writing About Music class. We were instructed to look at a pieces of music in a cultural critical lens and avoid making obvious connections. Essentially we were to connect music to a cultural movement that was taking place at the same time and figure out how the culture/time period may have affected the writing and reception of the music. Target 500-750 words.