Alan Walker

Alan Olav Walker (born 24 August 1997) is a Norwegian DJ and music producer, primarily known for his single "Faded" (2015), which was certified platinum in 14 countries.

Alan Olav Walker was born on 24 August 1997 in Northampton, England, to Anglo-Scottish British Philip Alan Walker, and his Norwegian wife Hilde Omdal Walker.

As a result, by his international parental inheritance, he was granted dual citizenship from both the United Kingdom and Norway.

He grew up with two siblings and at the age of two, he and his family moved to Bergen, Norway.

Walker had no musical background but was able to teach himself by watching YouTube tutorials based on musical production.

In 2012, Walker was listening to a song by Italian DJ David Whistle (also known as DJ Ness) and reached out to him to find out how he produced his music.

He was inspired by EDM producers K-391 and Ahrix, and by film composers like Hans Zimmer and Steve Jablonsky.

He started producing his music on his laptop using FL Studio.

In July 2012, with the help and feedback from his fans online, he began pursuing his music production career and slowly began posting his music to YouTube and SoundCloud.

Starting as a bedroom producer, he was better known as DJ Walkzz before signing a record deal and releasing his debut single in 2014.

Walker had previously released hands-up music, but released his first house song, "Dennis 2014", in 2014.

After "Dennis 2014" was released, he released "Fade" on 17 August 2014.

The track gained attention after its re-release via the record label NoCopyrightSounds on 19 November 2014, it was quickest to reach 1 million views on NoCopyrightSounds.

Walker stated that the creation of the track was inspired by K-391 and Ahrix, whose tracks were also picked up by the record label.

The track has over 3.5 billion views on YouTube, 115 million plays on Spotify, and 41 million streams on SoundCloud.

He has also released several known songs including "Force" (2015), "Sing Me to Sleep" (2016), "All Falls Down" featuring Noah Cyrus and Digital Farm Animals (2017), "Darkside" (2018), "Diamond Heart" (2018), "On My Way" featuring Sabrina Carpenter and Farruko (2019), and "Alone, Pt. II" featuring Ava Max (2019), all of which attracted hundreds of millions of views on YouTube.

Walker continued his music career and released Spectre and Force on NCS in 2015, both of which were hits.

Walker signed with MER Musikk under Sony Music Sweden and released his next single, "Faded", a remastered vocal version of "Fade".

It was released on 8 December 2015 and featured uncredited Naustdal pop singer, Iselin Solheim.

The single topped the year-end charts in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, iTunes charts in 33 countries, as well as entering top 10 in Spotify Global Chart.

The music video on YouTube has over 3.4 billion views and 26 million likes, placing it among the most-liked videos on the platform.

Three of his songs—"Faded", "Alone" (2016) and "The Spectre" (2017)—have garnered over a billion views on YouTube.

It has over 1.7 billion plays on Spotify, and is also one of the Top 10 Most Shazamed tracks of 2016.

The single also received official remixes from Tiësto, Dash Berlin, and Hardwell.

He later released an acoustic "restrung" version of the song, with all the EDM elements taken out.

Walker quit high school in January to pursue his music career.

On 27 February, Walker made his performance debut at the Winter X Games in Oslo, where he performed 15 tracks including the song "Faded" together with Iselin Solheim.

By March, Walker had produced 30 to 40 songs in total, but "Faded" marks his first single with Sony Music Sweden, and the first to achieve such global success.

On 7 April, Walker teamed up with Zara Larsson at the Echo Awards in Germany.

Together they performed each other's songs "Faded" and "Never Forget You".

Four weeks previously, he achieved the first place on NRJ Euro Hot 30 for the first time, which only has been achieved by one other Norwegian artist, Kygo.

The single "Sing Me to Sleep" was released on 3 June 2016 and features the same female vocalist Iselin Solheim as "Faded".

The song topped the iTunes charts in seven countries; the music video had over 690 million views on YouTube and 250 million views on Spotify.

Another single titled "Alone" was also released on December 2 of the same year, featuring uncredited Swedish singer Noonie Bao.

The music video on YouTube has over 1.2 billion views, and the music video has over 390 million views on Spotify.

On 21 and 22 December, Walker held the concert "Alan Walker is Heading Home" in his hometown Bergen at USF Verftet, where he performed 16 songs and tracks together with Angelina Jordan, Marius Samuelsen, Alexandra Rotan, Yosef Wolde-Mariam, and Tove Styrke as singers.

The concert was officially live-streamed on YouTube.

In early 2017, Walker's channel emerged as the most subscribed YouTube channel registered in Norway, with six million subscribers.

His channel is still the most subscribed in Norway, and has 45 million subscribers as of February 2024.

He also has the most views of any Norwegian creator, with 13.6 billion views.