“Wake Me Up” is the lead single for Avicii’s first studio album #True. It features Aloe Blacc, who wrote the lyrics on a plane flying from Geneva, Switzerland, to L.A.
Like many other Avicii hits, this song was first introduced at the Ultra Music Festival with the live performance of a bluegrass band, swaying so far away from the typical EDM spectrum. It infuses Irish folk music with house beats, with vocals from American soul singer Aloe Blacc.
The song spent 53 weeks on the Billboard charts (21 of them being in the top 10), making it the first Dance/Electronic song to stay over a year on that chart. It never reached the #1 spot, though; it only peaked at #4.
The song also broke all of Avicii’s personal records of sales, topping music charts in 22 different countries as well as breaking the top 10 mark in 6 others. Commercially, the song has been a bigger hit than his previous “Levels” that only peaked at #60 on Billboard’s Top 100 and only spent 20 weeks on the charts.