Stories (album)
| Stories (2015) |
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| Avicii studio album | |||||||
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Publication |
October 2, 2015 (see # release dates ) |
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| Label (s) | Avicii Music / Universal Music | ||||||
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Format (s) |
Download , CD, vinyl LP |
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Title (number) |
14th |
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running time |
54:33 |
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Avicii |
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Stories is the second studio album by Swedish DJ Avicii . It was released worldwide on October 2, 2015 via Universal and Avicii Music. The title alludes to his debut album, the combination of which results in the title "True Stories". The songs Waiting for Love and Pure Grinding and For a Better Day were released as EP beforehand. At the same time, a large number of the songs were presented in several live performances.
Production & collaborations
Avicii announced the plans for the new album early on. As with True, there should be a lot of collaborations with Stories . The first pre-release single was Waiting For Love in May 2015 . Parallel to the release of the EP Pure Grinding for a Better Day , which contains the songs Pure Grinding and For a Better Day , it was possible to pre-order the album. Only now did it become clear that the songs The Days and The Nights were no harbingers of the phonogram. Instead, collaborations with the British singer-songwriter Chris Martin of the band Coldplay , the Dutch DJ and producer Martin Garrix , the US band Zac Brown Band , and the musicians Alex Ebert , Mike Posner , Matisyahu , Wyclef Jean , Audra Mae or Noonie Bao included. Avicii already gave first impressions of the album with the pre-single Waiting For Love , which reached first place in several national charts. The double single Pure Grinding for a Better Day was released on August 28, 2015 and contained two songs, completely different in style, which gave another foretaste of the long play. Most recently, the songs Ten More Days and Broken Arrows were made available for download on iTunes. The latter became one of the most successful tracks on the album.
Advance announcements & publication
Stories was released on October 2, 2015 via Avicii Music, a sub-label of the Universal Music Group record company . The magazine Rolling Stone told Avicii that he had worked on over 70 songs for the album. There he announced a number of collaborations. He played the first IDs of the album at the Tomorrowland Festival 2014 in Belgium. Due to health problems, he declared on his 25th birthday, September 8, 2014, that he would have to stop all his current work and appearances. At the Ultra Music Festival 2015 in Miami he presented more songs. On May 27, 2015, he announced that the album's release was scheduled for fall 2015. Two months later, Bergling tweeted that Stories was finished after two years of work. On August 13, 2015, Bergling announced in a radio interview with the Austrian broadcaster Hitradio Ö3 that the album would contain 16 tracks, although Bergling wanted to release a second record shortly afterwards if Stories went well. Avicii's Japanese website announced on August 24, 2015 that the album would be available for pre-sale on August 28, 2015.
The album was released worldwide on the same day. The following table gives an overview of some countries.
| country | date | Label |
|---|---|---|
 Australia
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October 2nd, 2015 | Avicii Music / Universal Music Group |
 Belgium
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 Germany
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 New Zealand
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 Netherlands
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 Sweden
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 France
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 United Kingdom
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 Norway
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 Canada
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 United States
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Promotion & early feedback
On the Internet
Shortly after the release of his debut album True , the Swedish musician announced the release of a second album entitled Stories . Since then, countless fan-made album covers have appeared on the Internet. This was followed by recordings of unknown songs that Bergling played at festivals, as well as rumors about the release date. The uploaded songs included tracks that were actually on the album, but these mostly appeared under the wrong title, for example Pure Grinding , which was uploaded to the Internet as Nothing to Loose . One of the most popular suspected album track songs to appear on the internet was Heaven , which was recorded with Chris Martin . The song received very positive reviews in advance , but it was rerecorded for a reason not mentioned, but not with Martin, but with Waiting-For-Love vocalist Simon Aldred. At the same time, however, Bergling stated that Chris Martin was singing a different track on the album. The track True Believer ultimately turned out to be this. However, to the disappointment of the fans, it turned out that Heaven was not on the album at all. Rumors claim that Avicii announced that the track dubbed Heaven was just a mashup . The same thing happened with the song I'll Be Gone , which attracted attention through its guest mix in the 422nd episode of Tiësto's “Club Life” podcast. After it quickly spread as another album track, it became clear that the instrumental was used for the "Avicii-by-Avicii" remix of his track Liar Liar instead of the song that had already been released in 2013 under the title Stars . By the time it was released, however, a number of other album tracks made it onto the Internet illegally. These also served as advertising for the album and had a positive effect on the audience.
As a harbinger at festivals
As with True , Avicii presented a lot of songs from the studio album at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami on March 27, 2015 , including the title track Waiting for Love . However, he has already played a selection of songs at other appearances. For a Better Day, for example, debuted at Tomorrowland in Belgium on July 25, 2014, and Track City Lights even made its debut at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on November 9, 2013. In contrast to the premiere of the True album in 2013, his appearance on Ultra Music Festival 2015 was rated positively through and through and the songs that Avicii played there received mostly positive feedback. The reason for this was that the sound of the tracks turned out to be less special.
reception
| Average rating | |
| source | rating |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 64% |
| Professional reviews | |
| source | rating |
| Allmusic |
 
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| Billboard |
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| Boston Globe |
 positive
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| Rolling Stone |
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Success story & criticism
Avicii announced in 2013 that a follow-up album to True was planned. Only a short time after this announcement, numerous recordings of unpublished songs appeared on the Internet that he played at his appearances. The ribs were sometimes called several hundred thousand times. The first single Waiting for Love brought great success. The two successors Pure Grinding and For a Better Day also received consistently positive feedback. Accumulations of possible album tracks appeared on several websites, with SoundCloud and YouTube in particular as upload sources. The criticism became more and more positive, as the style could already be classified much more in the house than in the very special musical direction of the predecessor. It has been possible to pre-order the CD on iTunes since August 2015. Even without an audio sample, the album received mostly positive reviews. Music sites, critics, and fans wrote numerous reviews. Including Vitus Benson of the “Dance Charts” page: “Believe it or not, Avicii's new album“ Stories ”can definitely be bought blindly. If you can get involved in the mixed style of the Swedish DJ, then you have there are 14 great tracks, all of which prove how diverse this young producer is. " Thanks to strong pre-orders, the album was able to reach the iTunes album charts in several countries before it was released. After the release, the album moved up to number one in numerous download charts. After a week, Stories was also in the top 10 of the official album charts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as number one in Sweden.
Commercial win
The pre-release single Waiting for Love could already record the album's first success and reached number one in several countries. The double single Pure Grinding For a Better Day followed on from the success, reached the iTunes charts in several countries and shortly thereafter also entered the top 100 in Australia, Germany, Great Britain and Sweden, among others. For a Better Day was received a lot more positively and described as significantly more suitable for radio, which also brought the track greater commercial success than Pure Grinding . A few days before the release, the songs Ten More Days and Broken Arrows were released for download on iTunes and quickly entered the charts. Broken Arrows , which was recorded with Zac Brown , received a lot of attention, especially for the embodiment of his earlier style. The desired success also occurred for the album. In Germany it reached number 8 in the album charts, as well as top 10 in many other European countries. In Sweden it rose to the top of the album charts.
Singles
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Chart placements (preliminary) Explanation of the data |
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Waiting for love
Waiting for Love was released as Stories' first single on May 22, 2015. The song premiered at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami with co-producer Martin Garrix on March 27, 2015. The vocals were sung by Simon Aldred, while Martin Garrix was active as a contributing producer. Neither of the two was mentioned by name on the single, whereby in Garrix 'case the contract with "Spinnin' Records" was decisive. Due to the similarity of Aldred's voice to that of John Legend , it was assumed in advance that Legend would sing the song. The single was able to enter the single charts in over 20 countries. It occupied Waiting for Love 5 times square one. After just a few months, the single achieved 3 × platinum and 2 × gold status.
Pure grinding
Pure Grinding is the second single from the album. It contains vocals by Kristoffer Fogelmark and Earl St. Clair and was released on August 28, 2015 on the double single and EP Pure Grinding For a Better Day . The track premiered on July 24, 2015 at the Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium. However, the track received rather negative criticism, as Avicii embodies much more influences of chillstep and pop with this track than his typical house style. Before the release, the single made its way through the Internet under the title Nothing to Loose and quickly hit the download charts in several countries.
For a better day
For a Better Day was released as the third single parallel to the second. It was the second part of the EP Pure Grinding For a Better Day , which was released on August 28, 2015. The song is sung by the American singer-songwriter Alex Ebert . The track also premiered at the Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium, but already in the previous year, on July 25, 2014. In contrast to Pure Grinding , For a Better Day was rated significantly more positively and was especially recognized for the typical Avicii country influence and the cheerful Drop praised. Similar to its EP partner, the song hit the iTunes charts in several countries on the day it was released.
Track list
| # | title | Guest musician | length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Waiting for love | with Martin Garrix ; Vocals by Simon Aldred | 3:48 |
| 2 | Talk to Myself | Vocals by Sterling Fox | 3:55 |
| 3 | Touch me | Vocals by Celeste Waite | 3:06 |
| 4th | Ten More Days | Vocals by Zak Abel | 4:05 |
| 5 | For a better day | Vocals by Alex Ebert | 3:26 |
| 6th | Broken Arrows | with Zac Brown Band | 3:52 |
| 7th | True Believer | Vocals by Chris Martin and Avicii | 4:48 |
| 8th | City lights | Vocals by Noonie Bao | 6:28 |
| 9 | Pure grinding | Vocals by Kristoffer Fogelmark & Earl St. Clair | 2:51 |
| 10 | Sunset Jesus | with Gavin DeGraw , John Dhani Lennevald & Mike Posner | 4:24 |
| 11 | Can't Catch Me | Vocals by Wyclef Jean & Matisyahu | 3:59 |
| 12 | Somewhere in Stockholm | Vocals by Daniel Adams-Ray | 3:22 |
| 13 | Trouble | Vocals by Wayne Hector | 2:51 |
| 14th | Gonna love ya | with Sandro Cavazza | 3:35 |
| Bonus track of the UK version | |||
| 15th | The nights | Vocals by Nicholas RAS Furlong | 4:55 |
| Bonus track of the Japanese version | |||
| 15th | The Days | Vocals by Robbie Williams | 4:55 |
| 16 | The nights | Vocals by Nicholas RAS Furlong | 4:55 |
Web links
- Stories on "Iaatm"
- Avicii website
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Avicii cancels its upcoming performances" on EDM tunes (actually English)
- ↑ Interview with Avicii on SoundCloud
- ^ Twitter post
- ^ Publication in Australia
- ^ Publication in Belgium
- ↑ Publication in Germany
- ^ Publication in New Zealand
- ^ Publication in the Netherlands
- ^ Publication in Sweden
- ^ Publication in France
- ↑ Publication in the United Kingdom
- ^ Publication in Norway
- ↑ Publication in Canada
- ↑ Publication in the USA
- ↑ Article on Heaven
- ↑ Avicii on "Tracklist 1001"
- ↑ metacritic.com - Metascore
- ↑ Avicii on "iTunes Charts"
- ↑ DE ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. AT CH UK US SE
- ↑ Waiting for Love on iTunes
- ↑ Waiting for Love on "1001 Tracklist"
- ↑ on iTunes
- ↑ For a Better Day on "iTunes Charts"
- ↑ Detailed list of all producers and singers ( memento of the original from December 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
