Singer Oliver Tree Dies in Brazil Helicopter Collision at 32

A promising music career cut short. Singer Oliver Tree, who had just released his latest album Love You Madly Hate You Badly in April, was killed Sunday morning in a mid-air helicopter collision over Southwest Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Tree was 32.

According to local authorities cited by CNN Brazil, two helicopters collided above an electric vehicle yard in the Recreio dos Bandeirantes area. Tree was traveling with four others—passengers Lucas Vignale, Gaspar Prim, and Lucas Brito Chaves, plus pilot Alexandre Souza. The second helicopter, piloted by Charles Marsillac, was flying solo. All six people on board both aircraft were killed. An investigation is underway to determine what caused the crash.

Tree’s rise came early and steady. He first gained recognition in 2010 at just 17 years old, working with electronic producers Skrillex and Zeds Dead under the name Tree. After releasing an independent album in 2013, he stepped back from the spotlight to study music technology—a deliberate pause that many artists never recover from. But Tree did. His 2020 studio debut, Ugly Is Beautiful, went gold in the United States, anchored by the platinum hit Life Goes On. He followed with three more albums: Cowboy Tears, Alone in a Crowd, and most recently Love You Madly Hate You Badly.

The timing of this loss is particularly cruel. Tree had an ambitious international tour scheduled to launch July 1 in Lisbon, Portugal, with dates lined up across the United States, Europe, Australia, and China. Those shows will never happen. Instead, the music world is left with his final album and the catalog he built—a reminder of what he’d accomplished and what he might have still created.

In an industry obsessed with the next big thing, Tree embodied something less flashy but perhaps more valuable: consistent growth, a willingness to evolve, and the patience to build something real. His death is a tragedy that extends beyond his fans to everyone who understood the weight of artistic ambition.