Alan Walker

Alan Walker was on a path to reshaping the dance music of the 2010s before he was old enough to go clubbing. Born in the UK in 1997 to an English mother and Norwegian father, Walker was raised in Bergen, Norway, where he discovered electronic music as a young teen, learning to produce from online tutorials. By 15, he was uploading his music to the internet: bright, upbeat instrumentals informed by the drama of trance, the bounce of hardstyle, and the chipper mood of video-game music. It was 2015’s “Faded,” a soaring vocal remake of his wistful instrumental “Fade,” that would mark Walker’s turning point from digital native to world conqueror, topping charts and breaking records. The song’s easy gait and buoyant textures heralded EDM’s turn away from peak-time moods toward softer, more tropically flavored styles, and icons like Tiësto and Hardwell lined up to remix the then-18-year-old’s runaway hit. Practically overnight, Walker’s lilting chords and whimsical pan-flute leads became the dominant sound of crossover dance music. Yet across his debut album, 2018’s Different World, and subsequent singles, Walker has kept experimenting, tackling acoustic versions, country harmonies, Latin remixes, and more. Each song has been a new opportunity to buck convention and chart a new course—a natural instinct for someone who grew up seeing EDM not as something set in stone, but as a field of limitless possibility.