On the day Swedish DJ and electronic pop juggernaut Avicii died back in April 2018, the world prematurely lost one of its most beloved musical dynamos. The architect of some of the decade's most effervescent pulse-pounders - Wake Me Up, Levels and Hey Brother to name but three - we’re pretty confident that if he were still with us, there’d be many more entries in his genre-blurring stable.
For us, the one track that burns brightest of all (and perhaps most poignantly since his death by suicide) remains The Nights. A clarion call for day-seizing, this country-meets-EDM-banger was unleashed back in November 2014, hot on the heels of Avicii’s first flush of global success with his 2013 debut album True, and its barnstorming lead single, Wake Me Up.
Avicii - real name Tim Bergling - had been engrossed by fusing genres since his earliest teenage production forays, tinkering with melodies using a pirated copy of FL Studio.
By 2014, Bergling had become an outright master of building universally-appealing, technicolor music. His brush constantly dabbing in the palettes of other genres.
The Nights didn’t originate with Avicii, however. Its history extends to the year prior to its release, when the first version of the song was created by Californian professional singer/songwriter Nicholas Furlong (aka RAS).
Fast becoming an industry go-to, Furlong was on an enviable roll, having previously delivered the goods as songwriter for the likes of Diplo, Steve Aoki and 5 Seconds of Summer.
“I was at the studio with two of my friends, and we were working on this idea called ‘My Father Told Me’. It was a story about venturing out into the world and not being afraid to create your story,” Furlong told The Nights’ music video star Rory Kramer in an interview to mark a decade since its release. “The message was something that felt really personal for me, it really resonated with me - I thought it would really resonate with a lot of other people,” continued Furlong on the track’s fatherly-advice focussed lyrical theme.
“[My father] really gave me the courage to blindly throw myself out into the world and into the music industry with a head full of ideas and a heart full of enthusiasm,” Nicholas told Reddit of the lyrics in an AMA. “[It was] about a time that I told him I wanted to quit making music because I was being bullied for making music and he taught me that it didn't matter what other people thought because it wasn't their dream."
While the universal theme of parental (or more generally, human) support was a profound, positive aspect of the song, so too was the looming shadow of mortality omnipresent in the lyric. The song also directed listeners to embrace the impulse to revel in their happiest moments, in anticipation of the finality of death. Its chorus lyric;
“He said, ‘One day, you'll leave this world behind
So live a life you will remember’
My father told me when I was just a child
‘These are the nights that never die’”
Though Furlong's lyric stemmed from a real place, the song’s spirit was communal and big, already hinging on its arms-in-the-air, singalong chorus even in this demo form.
Reminiscent of a raucous pub shanty, its feel jibed with the rustic, homespun aesthetic then being popularised by a tranche of indie-adjacent, neo-folk purveyors. This scene was later described by Furlong as ‘Hey Ho music’. “There were artists like The Lumineers and Of Monsters and Men who were really having a moment in music. So, I had this idea to try and make the chorus sound like an Irish pub song.”
With the first version of the song tracked, Furlong knew his ditty could be elevated with the right artist to deliver it to the masses. But it was tricky to decide what route to take it down.
Used to pitching his songs to various major labels and artists, Nicholas was still not entirely sure who might want to take in this lyrically weighty, 'Irish pub' curio. Many brainstorming sessions with his team followed.
Suddenly it seemed obvious. Avicii.
Having been propelled to global fame on the back of the distilled country-meets-electronica sound of his debut, and the similar acoustic throb of Wake Me Up, Furlong could envision how his own song could be suitably lifted by Avicci’s knack for bringing out primary colours via his skill at arrangement, and for throwing in immediate earworm hooks.
“The song kind of aligned with his sound at the time,” recalled Furlong in his interview with Rory Kramer. Nicholas then scoured the web - and his own contacts - in an attempt to get the song to Tim, albeit to no avail.
Just before giving up, Nicholas decided to randomly search his own email inbox for the name of Avicii’s co-producer and manager, Ash Pournouri. Thankfully, fate was smiling on Nicholas that day, as Ash’s direct email address miraculously popped up.
It transpired that both he and Ash had been CC'd into a mass mail-out to key industry players. Feeling the hand of fate, Nicholas fired Ash an email, enthusiastically pitching the song.
Pournouri, who was then Tim’s right-hand man in the studio (and in terms of fishing for future Avicii track starting points), was in love with what he heard. He knew that Avicii could make planet-reaching magic with it.
Keen to challenge himself and work with a wide-range of artists, Bergling himself was always eager for new ideas or songs from other genres that would challenge him. ‘My Father Told Me’ fit the bill.
“I’ve done house music for so long, to be able to make rock songs and ballads, and explore reggae, blues, and jazz, it’s really challenged me as a musician, and helped me think outside the box and grow as an artist,” Tim told Revolt. “Not to mention, I’ve been able to work with incredible artists that I wouldn’t have had a chance to collaborate with otherwise.”
It was a few months after an initial confirmation from Ash that Avicii would begin working on The Nights. Avicci upped the pace, and added a suitably monolithic drop after the chorus, defined by a typically coruscating, repetitive synth melody. Avicii’s new arrangement isolated the song's reach for collective unity and launched it skyward with gargantuan EDM pomp before returning it to the directness of Furlong's original arrangement for its subsequent verse.
On a technical level, It’s highly likely that Avicii was still using FL Studio at this point, and he’d usually rely on the DAW’s step sequencer and piano roll to build out melodic ideas before even thinking about how they'd sound in the final mix.
Though it’s never been revealed for sure what synths were deployed in the making of The Nights, it’s most probable he used ReFx’s Nexus - a synth with which he designed his own unique sounds, whilst also stacking up a fair amount of the synth's own presets.
It’s also likely that Sylenth1 was in play here too. The chorus riff served a role which - if it were an Irish pub song - would traditionally be served by a violin (emulating the vocal melody) before the drop’s entirely new irresistible lead line sprinted over the chorus chords, adjoined to a relentless, throbbing beat. It was, in a word, perfect.
In Avicii’s only full-length tutorial with our very own magazine Future Music back in 2011, he told us that focusing on the creative impulses first and technical aspects second underpinned how he worked.
"I really couldn’t explain what I’m doing differently now - it’s just been small steps all the way,” Avicci told us. “I’m not the technical producer, I’ve learned how to use a compressor for instance, but I haven’t learned the technical reasons about why a compressor does what it does.”
Avicii’s instinctual approach was something that Nile Rodgers, who collaborated with Avicii in 2013 (on an as yet unreleased project) was awe-struck by. “I used to work with Avicii and Avicii didn’t understand tertiary harmony. He would write the most beautiful songs without knowing what he was doing - his ear was telling him what to do.”
Back to The Nights, and much to Nicholas’s genuine surprise Avicii had decided to leave his original demo vocal intact on the song in progress, and not bring in a new featured vocalist.
Furlong recalled finding this out after calling up Avicii’s manager Ash, curious as to who would front the upcoming release. “I said ‘Hey who are you going to get to sing it?’ and he said, ‘You’”.
With Avicii set on having Furlong remain the song's singer. Nicholas was tasked with re-recording his vocals with engineer Zakk Cervini so they would land with more impact ahead of the final mix. Meanwhile guitarist Colin Brittain re-recorded the rolling acoustic guitars, and Will Carter added some pastoral flavour with his lap-steel guitar.
“I was just bringing in anybody who would add the best version of those parts,” recalled Nicholas, who also told a Reddit AMA that he was never actually ever in the room with Avicii when he was making the track.
Experiencing massive success testing The Nights out at a few festivals (and with keen interest in the song from EA Sports for use in the next iteration of their Fifa video game series) the original plan to have the track B-side its sister song The Days was rethought, and instead The Nights became a standalone single. It was a smart move.
Alongside a suitably life-affirming montage video of YouTuber and ‘professional life-liver’ Rory Kramer vigorously participating in a range of extreme (yet fun-looking!) activities, The Nights became an overnight monster hit.
On the rapidly-shared video, Avicci himself said “The video for The Nights is awesome. It is exactly what I feel when I play the song live and it is the perfect representation of the lyrics. It is so much fun.”
Ubiquitous almost from the day of its release, The Nights has subsequently gone on to garner over 2 billion streams on Spotify alone, with its YouTube video edging closer to a billion views at time of writing.
A timeless celebration of human support, musical synergy and collective joy, The Nights cemented Avicii’s imperial phase, and still stands among his greatest ever work.
Despite the success of this collaboration, it’s perhaps sad that Tim and Nicholas didn’t really have time to develop their personal friendship further before Tim’s heartbreaking death by suicide in 2018.
Never actually meeting in person before he passed, Nicholas reflected on their relationship, “Our friendship never really got to go further than the song. It was just one of those things where somebody is going through something in their own way, and you kind of have to be respectful of that.”
This retrospective dimension adds extra weight to the song’s enduring theme of recognising the people who've been there for us in our darkest moments, and being cognisant of the thrill of living life for today.
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