Kygo

Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll (born 11 September 1991), known professionally as Kygo, is a Norwegian DJ and record producer.

Kygo was born on 11 September 1991 in Singapore to Norwegian parents and raised in Bergen.

He is the son of Kjersti Gjerde, a dentist in Norway, and Lars Gørvell-Dahll, who was working abroad in the maritime industry.

He has an older stepbrother Mads, two older sisters Johanne and Jenny, and a younger half-brother Sondre.

Throughout his childhood, he lived and travelled with his family in Brazil, Japan, Kenya and Egypt.

Kygo started taking piano lessons at the age of six and considers himself more of a pianist than a disc jockey.

He stopped when he was 15 or 16 and started producing music with Logic Studio and a MIDI keyboard while watching several tutorials on YouTube.

When he decided to pursue music full-time, he was halfway through a degree in business and finance at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

He has cited Swedish DJ Avicii as his main inspiration.

He garnered international attention with his December 2013 remix of the track "I See Fire" by Ed Sheeran and his December 2014 single "Firestone" (featuring Conrad Sewell).

On 15 May 2013, Kygo released his first single called "Epsilon" on the Romanian record label Ensis Records.

On 1 December 2014, he released the single "Firestone", featuring vocals from Conrad Sewell, which gained international recognition and debuted on several charts worldwide, being streamed 810 million times on YouTube and 901 million times on Spotify, as of 12 April 2022.

After receiving over 80 million views on YouTube and SoundCloud, Kygo was contacted by Avicii and by Chris Martin of Coldplay to create a remix of the song "Midnight".

He has also supported Avicii at Findings Festival in Oslo, Norway, in 2014.

On 19 September 2014, it was confirmed that Kygo was to replace Avicii at mainstage in Tomorrowland, due to Avicii's health concerns.

He was also featured in an interview for Billboard magazine, where he talked to writer Matt Medved about his remixes for musicians Diplo and Coldplay, and talked about his upcoming tour in North America.

In July 2014, Kygo entered into a partnership with EDM lifestyle brand Electric Family to produce a collaboration bracelet for which one hundred per cent of the proceeds are donated to Médecins Sans Frontières.

In the same month, he signed a record label deal with Sony International and Ultra Music.

In late 2015, he reached 1 billion streams on Spotify faster than any other artist, and by June 2016, he had reached 2 billion streams.

Kygo has since released several singles, such as "Stole the Show", "Here for You", and "Stay" in 2015, "It Ain't Me" collaborating with Selena Gomez in 2017 and a 2019 remix of "Higher Love" performed by Whitney Houston, all of which have debuted on several international charts.

In February 2015, Kygo's song "ID" was featured in the official trailer for Ultra Music Festival.

The same track is also featured on FIFA 16, a popular association football video game by EA Sports.

On 21 March 2015, he released his second single, titled "Stole the Show", featuring Parson James, which as of 2 January 2019, had 326 million views on YouTube.

On 31 July 2015, he released his third single, "Nothing Left", featuring Will Heard.

"Nothing Left" reached number one on the Norwegian Singles Chart.

In August 2015, Kygo was a featured headliner at Lollapalooza in Chicago, one of the biggest music festivals in the world.

On 4 September 2015, he released his fourth single, titled "Here for You", featuring Ella Henderson, which was revealed to be the vocal version of the song "ID" that was released as part of the Ultra Music Festival.

He made his U.S. television debut on The Late Late Show with James Corden in October 2015.

Three months later, his fifth single, "Stay", produced with fellow Norwegian record producer William Larsen and featuring vocals by Maty Noyes, was released on 4 December 2015.

In December 2015, Kygo became the fastest artist in history to reach one billion streams on Spotify.

After the release of the single, Kygo announced that he was embarking on a worldwide tour to promote his debut studio album.

His debut album, Cloud Nine, was released on 13 May 2016.

Kygo became the first house music producer to perform at an Olympics closing ceremony in August 2016 at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Soon after, revealed that his debut studio album was going to be released on 19 February 2016, but was delayed.

He, instead, released a teaser of the songs that he was working on that were on his debut studio album and released it on SoundCloud.

In the beginning of March 2016, Kygo announced that his debut studio album was going to be released on 13 May 2016, under the title Cloud Nine.

He also announced that he would be releasing three promotional singles, leading up to the release of the album.

In March 2018, Billboard ranked Kygo 3rd on its 2018 ranking of dance musicians titled Billboard Dance 100.

The same year, he was ranked 32 on DJ Mag's top 100 DJs of the world, and in October 2019 he was ranked 42.

Kygo's stage name is derived from the first two letters of his first and last names, generated during his use of Itslearning.