Stream It Or Skip It?

Avicii: My Last Show, which streams on Netflix alongside the new documentary Avicii: I’m Tim, presents the biggest moments from the last live performance of the DJ born Tim Bergling. “Wake Me Up,” “Levels” – in August 2016, the EDM star transmits his hugest hits through a web of emerald green lasers from the stage at Ushuaïa in Ibiza, Spain. Which is awesome, because bangers, and the feeling is electric. But Avicii: My Last Show is also incredibly bittersweet, because In April 2018, Tim Bergling took his own life. This abbreviated look at his farewell set – at the time, Avicii had already announced his departure from shows and touring – joins the I’m Tim doc, a coffee table book produced by his family, and the Avicii Experience Museum in his hometown of Stockholm, Sweden as testaments to what Bergling achieved through his music. “Wish I could stay forever this young/Not afraid to close my eyes…So wake me up when it’s all over…”

The Gist: By 2016, Avicii was done. Not in the sense of his career – as a DJ, Tim Bergling had been pulling down $250k per set for years, since the global success of pulsing EDM singles like “Wake Me Up,” “Seek Bromance,” “Levels,” and “Hey Brother.” But as a person, he was done with the road and playing live. As a person whose health, by 2016, had suffered. Who had struggled mightily with issues of anxiety. Whose friends and family had engineered an intervention. And just as someone who decided for himself that being Tim and surviving was more crucial than being Avicii and performing.

There is no getting around the ultimate choice that Bergling made two years later. But as a moment in time, My Last Show feels fresh, alive, and like a proper farewell. Ushuaïa is a resort right on the beach in Ibiza, and palm trees line an audience area that comes complete with a water feature. And Avicii, set up on one end of the oblong space ringed by hotel rooms and resort buildings, is supported by professional sound and lighting at full bore – racks of speakers, a swirling mist of green and red lasers, sweeping spotlights, and dancers on attitude boxes. Each beat-drop is accompanied by rousing gushes of flame.

It’s not like his last show ever was only 20 minutes. The length of My Last Show does feel abrupt, but its edit of Avicii’s actual hours-long set in 2016 at Ushuaïa goes correctly heavy on the songs that even now continue to define the EDM star’s legacy. The melodies and vocal hooks from his stable of ubiquitous singles – many combine the energy of progressive house with the warmth of country and soul, a sound still influential on pop music today – become both rallying cries for the immediate dancefloor and lasting moments to shout out the intangible, only briefly graspable audacity of being young, and without a care in the entire world.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The 2017 documentary Avicii: True Stories, shot in the years leading up to his suicide and originally released through Netflix, does not seem to currently be streaming. But the streamer presents My Last Show as a companion piece to I’m Tim, a brand-new documentary about Avicii’s life and work.

Performance Worth Watching: Put your hands up for the crowd at Avicii’s Ibiza set, who in frequent cutaways and close-ups in My Last Show combine all the signifiers of people on a dancefloor who are also at a wild college party. The shoulder-riders, the sunglasses-at-night wearers, the glow stick enthusiasts – they’re all here, and always next to somebody who never tires of running in place.

Memorable Dialogue: Brief segments imported from the I’m Tim doc feature testimonials from a few of Avicii’s collaborators. “I first met Tim working,” Chris Martin of Coldplay says. “And in half an hour, he did the whole thing. It was then I realized, these guys are new virtuosos. But their instrument is a laptop.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Take a look through the YouTubes and the Subreddits and you’ll find plenty of Avicii live stuff – headlining sets from major music festivals, jumbly and crowdsourced footage from inside clubs, and even extended portions of the farewell set featured in Avicii: My Last Show. It could all be a commemoration. Even this Ibiza set took place a decade ago. And just like all the available footage, it takes on a sense of reflection, because of Tim Bergling’s ultimate decision to end his own life. But there is proof in the power of melody, and the tractor beam-like pull of a house music beat – and especially these things as they relate to Avicii’s talent for combining them – that Last Show can keep its focus on the gas pedal, its spiritual mandate to “Remember me like this,” and, in the end, to sustain the joy the DJ’s music embodied in the first place.

Our Call: Stream It. Avicii: My Last Show acts as a brief, official tribute to Avicii’s sonic legacy – highlights of a DJ’s live set as he blasts out his best songs to a teeming crowd on familiar turf. And it can stay that way, too, as a standalone, aligned with the I’m Tim doc, which is more a more solemn complete statement.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.