Oliver Tree

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Oliver Tree (2020)

Oliver Tree Nickell (born June 29, 1993 in Santa Cruz , California ), known as Oliver Tree , is an American multimedia artist , singer-songwriter and record producer . He embodies the eccentrically dressed and scooter- crazy fictional character Turbo, which he presented for the first time on the video portal Vine . In 2020 Tree released his first studio album Ugly Is Beautiful on Atlantic Records .

Life

Oliver Tree appears almost exclusively as a fictional character, which is why not all statements about his private life are understandable. According to his own narrative , he grew up as the son of circus acrobats and sometimes accompanied them on the unicycle . On other occasions, he claims that his parents are musicians. At the age of three he took piano lessons and shortly afterwards wrote his first own songs. After graduating from high school, he studied at San Francisco State University and later moved to the California Institute of the Arts .

Oliver Tree has been passionate about action sports since childhood and, above all, often uses his passion for scooters in his (music) videos in an absurd way. At the age of 16 he joined a professional competition team, which he left after a serious fall in which he fractured both wrists .

Career

After playing guitar in a ska band called Irony during middle school and gaining some stage experience, Oliver Tree turned to electronic music . He began to work as a DJ and performed together with dubstep giants such as Skrillex and Nero , while he published his own material on SoundCloud under his middle name Tree. In February 2013, his first multi-genre-influenced studio album, Splitting Branches, was self-published.

The London label R&S Records became aware of the young artist and signed him. In August 2013 he released the EP Demons on R&S , which contains two songs of his own and a cover of Radiohead's Karma Police personally authorized by Thom Yorke . In addition to a string quartet, Johnny Quinn, the drummer of Snow Patrol , participated in the recordings. Together with befriended musicians, Oliver Tree founded the Tree Collaborations collective. Then he started working on his first real studio album, which was due to be released in autumn 2014. However, because he did not get the support he wanted from the label, he bought himself $ 30,000 free from his contract with the help of electronic musician and collaborator Whethan .

In 2016 Tree devoted himself entirely to his fictional character Turbo and from then on published under the search engine- friendly name Oliver Tree. Together with Whethan he brought out his debut single When I'm Down that same year . Several absurd video clips on Vine piqued the interest of a manager at Atlantic Records , where Tree signed a deal in 2017 in the hope of realizing his vision as a video artist. In the following two years he released two EPs as well as several singles including lavish music videos . The title Hurt , which he presented on the Late Late Show with James Corden , spread virally or like a virus in the media and became one of the most played singles on alternative radio in 2019. In the fall of the same year, Oliver Tree headlined more than 28 cities in the US for the first time .

After years of work and a postponement due to COVID-19 , Ugly Is Beautiful, his first studio album, was released on a major label in July 2020 . As a promotion, he streamed a video on his YouTube channel of a fake world record attempt over the longest distance ever covered on a giant scooter. However, he actually set the world record for the largest scooter (4.16 × 3.13 meters) in May. The album received mixed reviews and reached number one on the Alternative Albums chart . In a Twitch interview with Anthony Fantano , Tree expressed his displeasure with the collaboration with Atlantic - due to the aggressive marketing policy, for example - and announced that he would not release any more albums.

Style and reception

Oliver Tree as a turbo

Oliver Tree already experimented with various fictional characters while at R&S Records and finally decided on the eccentric Turbo in 2016. The most striking feature of his persona is the characteristic bowl cut , which brought him comparisons with Moe Howard from the Three Stooges and the villain Vector from the animated film Despicable Me . For this he is wearing sunglasses with red frames, a colorful ski anorak , extremely wide-cut JNCO jeans and white socks in slippers . Tree stated in 2016 that he was rebelling against the contemporary ideal of beauty with this outfit and wanted to look as "stupid and ridiculous as possible". In an early Vine clip, Turbo introduced himself with the words “What's up, my name is Turbo, I'm 32 years old, I love to dance and I sell ecstasy to children at raves”. In addition to scooter tricks, his repertoire includes oversized e-cigarettes and other meme- friendly absurdities. The Rolling Stone found that Oliver Tree was method acting as a hooligan and had the eccentricity of Napoleon Dynamite .

In contrast to his persona, Oliver Tree's music is quite serious and not designed for polarization. It combines alternative and indie rock with hip-hop and electronic music and deals with topics such as vulnerability ( Hurt ) or materialism ( Cash Machine ). At first he took noise with a handheld - recorder on and produced his music with the software Ableton Live . The deal with Atlantic gave him the opportunity to translate his over-the-top comedy into high-quality music videos, which contributed quite a bit to his popularity. In 2019, the medium video accounted for up to 40 percent of his streams at times . Some pseudo-documentary short films on his YouTube channel, in which he blurs the lines between fictional character and his own personality, brought him comparisons with the semi-fictional band Spın̈al Tap .

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Ugly is beautiful
  AT 51 07/31/2020 (2 weeks)
  UK 32 07/30/2020 (2 weeks)
  US 14th 08/01/2020 (3 weeks)

Studio albums

  • 2013: Splitting Branches (as Tree)
  • 2020: Ugly Is Beautiful

EPs

  • 2013: Demons (as Tree)
  • 2018: Alien Boy (US:goldgold)
  • 2019: Do You Feel Me?

Singles

  • 2016: When I'm Down (with Whethan)
  • 2017: All You Ever Talk About (with Whethan)
  • 2017: All I Got / Welcome to LA
  • 2017: Cheapskate
  • 2017: Enemy (with Whethan)
  • 2018: Upside Down
  • 2018: Alien Boy
  • 2018: Movement
  • 2018: Hurt (US:goldgold)
  • 2019: Fuck
  • 2019: Miracle Man
  • 2019: Cash Machine
  • 2020: Let Me Down
  • 2020: Bury Me Alive
  • 2020: Let Me Down ( feat.Blink-182 )

Guest Posts

  • 2016: My Mind Is (NVDES feat. Oliver Tree)
  • 2016: Forget It (Getter feat. Oliver Tree)
  • 2018: Running (NVDES feat. Oliver Tree)
  • 2019: Pumpidup (Lorenzo feat. Oliver Tree)

Web links

Commons : Oliver Tree  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rebecca Schiller: Get to Know 'Hurt' Singer Oliver Tree: Watch. Billboard , April 1, 2019, accessed August 2, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Oliver Tree INTERVIEW. fantano / YouTube , July 17, 2020, accessed on August 2, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Elias Leight: Oliver Tree Is Outlandish, and It's Working. Rolling Stone , August 16, 2019, accessed August 2, 2020 .
  4. ^ A b c d Wallace Baine: With a new music video, Santa Cruz's Oliver Nickell takes on the mainstream. Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 22, 2016, accessed August 2, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Oliver Tree - H3 Podcast # 198. H3 Podcast / YouTube , July 18, 2020, accessed on August 2, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Oliver Tree On Breaking Both of His Wrists. H3 Podcast Highlights / YouTube , July 13, 2019, accessed on August 2, 2020 .
  7. ↑ a b c Josh Terry: Chartbreaker: Inside Oliver Tree's Retro, Meme-Friendly World And How He Turned 'Hurt' Into a Hit. Billboard , March 29, 2019, accessed August 2, 2020 .
  8. ↑ a b c Wallace Baine: Santa Cruz's Oliver “Tree” Nickell has reached the ears of world from his laptop. Santa Cruz Sentinel, December 18, 2013, accessed August 2, 2020 .
  9. ^ Whitney Shoemaker: Oliver Tree Takes "Hurt" Performance to New Heights in Stilts. Altpress, May 21, 2019, accessed on August 2, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Largest kick scooter. Guinness World Records , May 19, 2020, accessed August 5, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Cat Zhang: Oliver Tree - Ugly Is Beautiful. Pitchfork , July 23, 2020, accessed on August 2, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Ben Jolley: Oliver Tree - 'Ugly Is Beautiful' review: more than just a piss-taking internet troll. NME , July 22, 2020, accessed on August 2, 2020 .
  13. ^ Chart History - Oliver Tree. Billboard , accessed August 2, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Chart sources: AT UK US
  15. ↑ Music Sales Awards: US
personal data
SURNAME Tree, Oliver
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nickell, Oliver Tree (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American multimedia artist, singer-songwriter, and music producer
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1993
PLACE OF BIRTH Santa Cruz (California)