Written By | Entertainment Desk
On Sunday morning, June 14th, Oliver Tree died in a helicopter collision above Rio de Janeiro at age thirty-two.
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LOS ANGELES — June 15, 2026
Oliver Tree Nickell was the kind of artist you either got immediately or didn't get at all. His music blended alt-pop, nu-metal, electronic, and hip-hop. His aesthetic — oversized shirts, bowl haircut, scooter-riding persona — was absurdist performance art. He was strange, deliberate, and often brilliant. On Sunday morning, June 14th, he died in a helicopter collision above Rio de Janeiro at age thirty-two.
Two helicopters collided at approximately 9 a.m. local time. All six people aboard were killed. Oliver Tree had been in Brazil as part of an ongoing tour. Also among the dead: Argentine YouTuber Gaspar Prim Diaz (Gaspi), twenty-three.
By Sunday afternoon, Tree was trending globally. By evening, tributes poured in from every corner of the music industry.
A Career Built on Controlled Chaos
Born in Santa Cruz in 1993, Tree studied at the Musician's Institute in Hollywood. He released his debut EP Demons in 2013. But it was his 2020 debut full-length album, Ugly Is Beautiful , that broke through — topping Billboard charts, going Gold, and producing "Life Goes On," a track that amassed billions of streams.
He followed with Cowboy Tears (2022), Alone in a Crowd (2022), and this year's Love You Madly, Hate You Badly — called "his most emotionally direct record yet" by NME.
The Persona and the Person Beneath It
The bowl cut, the vintage sportswear, the scooter: these were deliberate. "The character lets me be honest," Tree told Rolling Stone. "If it's Oliver Tree the character saying it, I can say anything."
Off-stage, he was quieter. He spoke openly about mental health and the loneliness inside a curated public presence. His relationship with Melanie Martinez ended acrimoniously in 2021. On Sunday, Martinez posted: "He was a true artist with a soft heart. I have been an absolute wreck."
An Outpouring of Grief
KSI called Tree "one of the most genuinely original artists I ever encountered." Steve-O wrote: "I'm destroyed. He was one of a kind." Fans gathered spontaneously at venues in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Amsterdam. Spotify reported a 400% surge in streams across his catalogue within twelve hours.
An Unfinished Chapter
Tree had been on the South American leg of a world tour. His last performance was June 6th in São Paulo. The European leg, scheduled to begin July 13th, will not happen.
The particular cruelty of losing an artist young: the records stop, but the questions about what might have come next never do. What we have is four studio albums, a catalogue of viral moments, and a body of work that captured something true about performing happiness while quietly drowning in it.
What This Means for You
If you never listened to Oliver Tree: start with "Life Goes On," then "Alien Boy," then "Miss You." Get past the surface strangeness. There is something underneath it that is worth finding. Something he worked very hard to put there.
