June 29, 1993 – June 14, 2026
Oliver Tree Nickell grew up in Santa Cruz, California, where his childhood was anything but ordinary - both of his parents were acrobats, and he spent several years traveling with the Dell Pickle Family Circus as a unicyclist. "I'd like to think that prepared me for life on the road as a touring artist,"
he told Billboard.
Outside the circus ring, Oliver Tree began improvising music at age 3 and claimed to have written his first symphony at 6, later teaching himself to produce beats on GarageBand as a teenager.
By the time he was 16, he had signed with a junior scooter team and was close to going professional until a bad fall during a contest run when he hit a pebble at full speed and broke both wrists and a thumb joint, an accident he later revisited in his song "
Hurt."
In May 2020, Oliver Tree turned his obsession with scooters into a Guinness World Record. He built and rode
the world's largest kick scooter, measuring 4.16 metres tall and 3.13 metres long, in Los Angeles. According to Guinness World Records, the feat was undertaken to "fulfil a lifelong dream."
Before we knew him as Oliver Tree, he built his early fanbase on Vine through a character called "Turbo," an absurdist caricature of a social media influencer who wore a bowl cut and comically oversized JNCO jeans.
Tree told Range magazine the character was "just the right amount of annoying," and the deliberately grating persona caught viral attention in a way his sincere musical output hadn't managed. He later admitted that he leaned into the Turbo character out of frustration, using the audience it attracted to eventually launch his music career on his own terms.
Oliver Tree released music under various names for years before his breakthrough. It was his 2016 collaboration with producer Whethan on "
When I'm Down" that changed his career trajectory. The track accumulated millions of streams, leading Atlantic Records to sign him in late 2017.
Tree told Westword that after years of failed attempts at breaking through, "It was nice to see there was something there that could actually connect."
After signing with Atlantic Records, Tree released the Alien Boy EP in early 2018, which blended elements of alt-rock, hip-hop, and electropop in a way that critics and fans found genuinely hard to categorize.
In 2021, Oliver Tree announced he was retiring from music, only to reverse course shortly afterward, announcing one final album called Cowboy Tears. The album was released on February 18, 2022, and the "retirement" stunt, whether genuine or theatrical, kept his name in headlines and maintained the air of unpredictability that defined his public persona. It was far from the last time Tree would blur the line between performance art and earnest self-promotion.
Oliver Tree teamed up with German DJ Robin Schulz in 2022 on "
Jerk," a track that took on a life of its own after a remix exploded on TikTok. The song peaked at #3 on the UK Singles Chart and earned Tree a 2024 Brit Award nomination for International Song of the Year. It became his biggest international hit and introduced him to audiences far beyond his existing fanbase.
After years with Atlantic Records, Tree parted ways with the label in April 2026 under fraught circumstances. He had announced that his album Love You Madly Hate You Badly had been cancelled by the label, saying, "I just got word that my album is no longer coming out. Love You Madly Hate You Badly is officially cancelled and I am parting ways with Atlantic Records."
Undeterred, he released the album independently through his own imprint, Alien Boy Records, later that same month.
Oliver Tree passed away on June 14, 2026, in a helicopter collision in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The crash occurred when two helicopters collided mid-air over the Recreio dos Bandeirantes area in southwest Rio de Janeiro. All six people on board both helicopters were killed, including Tree and Brazilian YouTuber Gaspi.
Oliver Tree and Melanie Martinez dated from 2019 to around 2021. Their breakup was amicable, but the situation dragged on for fans who kept speculating her 2023 album Portals was about Tree, which she denied, and she reportedly had to ask fans to "please leave @olivertree alone."
Following Tree's death, Martinez posted a heartfelt tribute on Instagram Stories, saying she had been an "absolute wreck" since the news broke and remembering him as a "true artist."
