4 July 2013
Avicii’s sudden and tragic death in 2018 overshadows ‘Wake Me Up’ for me now. The immense fame and pressure that came with gargantuan worldwide hits like this had their impact on his wellbeing, and the song’s lyrics carry an unavoidable resonance.
I wasn’t a fan of the track at the time. Its mix of US country melancholia and Euro-dance euphoria was certainly an interesting and ear-catching choice of soundclash for a mainstream pop record, but to my preferences the sentimental lyrics of the former and the nagging hook of the latter were two wrongs that didn’t make a right. That cronut-like combination of “I’m so sad” and “let’s party like there’s no tomorrow” feels opportunistic: people love sad stuff and people also love happy stuff so let’s give them a track with both, I imagine someone thinking or perhaps even typing onto a PowerPoint slide. ‘Wake Me Up’ being played everywhere in the Ireland of summer 2013, including as a cover version as Gaeilge by an Irish-speaking summer college, didn’t endear it to me either. Effective, perhaps, but tiresome quickly.
On a personal note, ‘Wake Me Up’ went to number one on the Irish charts in the week I moved back to Ireland after eight years living in Paris, France. (It would top the French charts later that summer, so I wouldn’t have missed out on it either way.) It never occurred to me at the time to associate that song’s lyrics with me starting a new period in my life, and it still doesn’t now, but I imagine many ‘Wake Me Up’ likers feel it as emblematic of a similar change in their world. Anyway, getting back to my point, from here on I have in theory some local context when considering Ireland’s chart-topping singles but, by the same token, being in the jurisdiction at the time means I lose my cloak of plausible deniability. I just hope my repeat downloading of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Galway Girl’ doesn’t come back to bite me.
