Melodies that gleam like festival lights, floor-shaking drops, sublime vocal hooks—Avicii was a master of hands-in-the-air EDM anthems. His music cuts between arena-scale house epics, hypnotic trance bangers and crossover dance-pop smashes with the crowd-pumping skill of a killer DJ. Despite his undeniable club credentials, there's way more to the Swedish DJ-producer's sound than thumping beats and rumbling basslines. Blending sparkling synth riffs with pulsing rhythms, Avicii classics like “Levels” deliver an instant, ecstatic hit of pure pleasure, and helped set off the EDM explosion of the early '10s. But his genre-smashing tracks like “Wake Me Up”, which mashed up EDM with bluegrass and soul, go beyond mere body-moving thrills—they're bold experiments that helped introduce genuine songwriting and a spectrum of new sounds to dance music.