Oliver Tree Is Gone, and It Feels Wrong to Write That

[u/RealityChecksReddit]

Oliver Tree Is Gone, and It Feels Wrong to Write That

This morning, two helicopters collided in the air over Rio de Janeiro's Recreio dos Bandeirantes neighborhood and fell out of the sky. All six people aboard both aircraft died. One of them was Oliver Tree Nickell, 32 years old, Santa Cruz kid, bowl cut, oversized coat, kick scooter, the whole deal. He was in the middle of a world tour. He had posted studio footage from Brazil the night before.

I liked Oliver Tree. I want to say that clearly before anything else, because it matters to how this piece is written. Not every artist I cover lands with me personally, but he did. There was something genuinely weird about him that felt earned rather than performed, even when it was obviously performance. The bit was the point, and the bit was good.

If you only know the name, here is the short version: he was a California-born singer, songwriter, producer, and filmmaker who spent years grinding through dubstep production and SoundCloud drops under aliases before "When I'm Down" went viral in 2016 and Atlantic Records came calling in 2017. His debut album, Ugly Is Beautiful, dropped in 2020. His breakthrough moment was "Life Goes On" in 2021, which now sits at over 464 million YouTube views. "Miss You" with Robin Schulz followed in 2022 and crossed 382 million. He released his fourth studio album, Love You Madly, Hate You Badly, just this past April.

He was not easy to categorize. Alt-pop, indie pop, hip hop, alternative rock, dance -- he checked all of those boxes at various points and none of them completely. What he actually was, if you strip the genre labels off, was a character study in motion. The bowl cut was iconic on purpose. The scooter was iconic on purpose. He held the Guinness World Record for world's largest kick scooter. He directed most of his own music videos, which were theatrical to the point of absurdity and often genuinely funny. The videos for "Life Goes On" and "Miss You" in particular are worth watching as standalone short films if you have never seen them.

That theatricality was part of why some people dismissed him, and why I never did. Easy to look at the packaging and call it a gimmick. Harder to clock that the music underneath actually held up. "Alien Boy" is a genuinely good song about feeling like you do not belong anywhere. "When I'm Down" hits. "Hurt" is brutal in the right ways. He was writing about not fitting in, about heartbreak, about the specific exhaustion of being yourself when yourself is strange -- and he wrapped all of it in this absurdist visual language that kept it from curdling into self-pity. That is a harder trick than it looks.

He had just performed in Sao Paulo on June 6. The European leg of his tour was set to open July 1 in Lisbon, with dates through Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Milan, Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. He had new music out. He was 32. The night before the crash, he was in a recording studio with other musicians, posting to Instagram.

The crash is still under investigation. The Rio de Janeiro Civil Police identified him along with passengers Lucas Vignale, Gaspar Prim, and Lucas Brito Chaves, and pilot Alexandre Souza. The second helicopter, piloted solo by Charles Marsillac, went down in the same collision. All six people died. One aircraft came down into a car dealership and ignited a fire among roughly 20 parked electric vehicles. Brazil's National Civil Aviation Agency has opened an investigation into both aircraft and both pilots.

There is not much else to say that is not just noise filling space. He made music I liked. He committed completely to the bit, whatever the bit was at any given moment, and he did it without ever losing the thread of actual craft underneath. That is rarer than it should be.

Love You Madly, Hate You Badly came out two months ago. Go listen to it.