The recent release of the 2016 Ibiza version of Avicii’s ‘Forever Yours’ has sparked some controversy in the music world. While some fans were elated to have this version out, Sandro Cavazza who provided vocals for the track took to social media saying that he didn’t approve the songs release. Avicii was always very particular about his music leaving many songs on the cutting room floor which begs the question of should these tracks be seeing the light of day?
‘Forever Yours’ started out life as demo from Sandro Cavazza that just had guitar and vocals which he showed to Avicii a week before Ultra Music Festival in 2016. The pair of them worked together on it quickly developing the first version of the track that would be heard at Ultra which wowed the crowd. ‘Forever Yours’ would see several different iterations but was unfortunately never finished due to the passing of Avicii.
To help him get through this hard time and to try do some good in the wake of Tim’s death, Cavazza decided to complete the song as a tribute to Avicii with all the proceeds from it going to the Tim Bergling Foundation. Kygo had reached out to Cavazza following Tim’s passing to give his condolences and stayed in contact with him. Kygo had always been a huge admirer of Avicii so when Cavazza decided to finish the track he brought him in to help complete Avicii’s vision as faithfully as possible.
Sandro and Tim had a lot of unreleased and unfinished tracks together before Tim died and ‘Forever Yours’ is the only one of them to come out with the tribute version and the 2016 Ibiza version. Following the release of the Ibiza version Sandro took to social media to say “I have for years now been asked by the family and pinguettes recordings to release the unreleased material I have done together with Tim and I have consistently said no. A lot of you probably wonder why those songs never have come out and the truth is that I don’t want to release any of those songs Without Tim being here. He is the only one who knew when his songs were finished and I do and will continue to respect that.”
While it’s nice to hear more of Avicii’s music, those unreleased songs are ones that are not finished and therefore wouldn’t be released till Avicii had worked on them meticulously to fruition. The Ibiza version that has been released was wildly different to the version played at Ultra as the end vision for the song was yet undecided and therefore the song was unfinished. To release an unfinished song goes against Avicii’s way of working and ignoring the wishes of Sandro Cavazza who played an equal part in its creation seems wrong.
Despite this Avicii’s parents approved the release of ‘Forever Yours’, though that won’t have been with any ill intent and rather them wanting the memory of their son to live on through his music. There’s still countless unreleased Avicii tracks that could still come out, but the question remains as to whether they should without Tim being here to complete them in the way he would have wanted to. The most important thing is that his memory is honoured, and his legacy is looked after.
