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Music

Avicii Sort of Retired, Gave Out His Phone Number, and Now He's Not Texting Us Back

We tried to get the lowdown on the EDM mainman's early semi-retirement. We failed. Slightly.

Did you hear that? That massive bang? That huge crash? That was everything changing forever. Ladies and gentlemen, Avicii has quit music. Sort of. Yes you read that right: the King of EDM, as we're sure at least a few people have called him over the years, has abdicated. He's left the building. Goodnight. Sayonara. That's it. Finished. Game over.

In a statement released on his website, Avicii, AKA Tim Bergling, has revealed that we'll never see him again. Well, at least after his current tour ends, he'll no longer be playing live shows. So he's not actually stopping making music, but if we want to see the man himself in the flesh you'll need to become super solid personal friends with him. Which might be slightly easier than it initially seems. More of that below. The lengthy bulletin teeters tonally between the actually sort of quite nice pitter patter of painless platitudes, and the kind of genuinely terrifyingly megalomaniac business speak adopted by precocious AS business studies students who've watched an episode or ten too many of The Apprentice and have decided that they'll retire at the age of 35 after 14 years at Goldman Sachs.

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"Thank you for letting me fulfil so many of my dreams," he says. "I will be forever grateful to have experienced and accomplished all that I have with the help of the team around me and my beloved fans. Thank you to all my peers in the business for building a new movement that took the world by storm and I was lucky enough to be in the middle of it. Thank you to all my partners through the years who believed in what I have created and wanted to amplify my work to a truly global presence."

Ah, the glorious aim of the artist — to establish a truly global presence! Nice work, Timbo, mate. Rather intriguingly, right at the bottom of the post, the man behind classics like "Wake Me Up" and "Levels" includes his new phone number, stating, "P.S. I've got a new phone so you can text me re all this +46769436383. Please bare with me I might not be super quick to reply. X"

Avicii enjoying some food from Iceland

So, being good journalists, we tried to chat to Avicii. He didn't pick up our calls. So we text him. Here's what happened when we texted Avicii.

Follow Josh on Twitter to find out of Avicii texts him back.