“Wake Me Up” by Avicii featuring Aloe Blacc

"Wake Me Up" was the lead single from True, Avicii's debut album, released on 17 June 2013, and it's the moment a Swedish DJ dragged an acoustic guitar onto the main stage. He wrote it with Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger and soul singer Aloe Blacc, who sings it; Einziger plays the guitar, Peter Dyer the keyboard, and Avicii, credited under his own name Tim Bergling, produced and mixed.

He first tried it out at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami with a live band behind him, Blacc and Einziger joined by Incubus' Ben Kenney on bass and José Pasillas on drums, and a chunk of the dance crowd was baffled, even angry. Then it went worldwide, hitting number one across much of Europe and turning up to open or close his sets all through the 2013 festival season. The UK chart later named it the highest-charting dance track of the decade.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.