Oliver Tree, the American songwriter, rapper and producer whose quirky, child-like singing spawned international viral hits like “Life Goes On” and “Miss You” in the early 2020s, died Sunday in a helicopter crash in Brazil. He was 32.
The news was shared by CNN Brazil and TMZ. The helicopter carried six people, including the pilot, and crashed into a second helicopter. There were no survivors.
Tree was in Brazil as part of his world tour. He performed in São Paul on June 6, and was next expected to play in Lisbon, Portugal, on July 13.
The singer signed to Atlantic Records in 2017 after the success of his viral single “When I’m Down.” His fourth studio album “Love You Madly Hate You Badly” was released in Apri 2026.
Oliver Tree Nickell was born on June 29, 1993, in Santa Cruz, California. His career was marked by a zest for coming up with characters he embodied for months on end. Early fans can recall his Vine character Turbo, who wore ultra-wide JNCO jeans and had a bowl cut, and that Tree referred to as “just the right amount of annoying.”
Tree as Turbo went on to engage in online battles and even broke a Guiness World Record when he constructed the largest scooter in the world in 2021.
His next foray was the relesae of his country album “Cowboy Tears” in 2022, an album he was promoting when he sat down for a Zoom interview with Range the same year. “I just woke up, you got the real guy today, brother,” he told the outlet at the beginning of their discussion, having begun his day in Utah as part of that year’s tour.
“I pulled together all these things from my life and packaged it in a certain way which allowed it to be authentic,” he said of his characters and work. “It’s important that it’s true to you, and not just a fabrication of a fantasy. This whole cowboy thing, that’s from my past. My grandfather was a cowboy, his grandfather was a cowboy, and I grew up going to a ranch every summer for a month.”
Tree lived on a ranch for six months and ended up making the album, a bit of a surprise as he’d previously publicly retired from making music. “There’s a lot more personal information on there than I’ve shared in the past. I was crying cowboy tears for real, and people need to cry more,” he told Range. “A lot of people put up tough exterior shells, especially guys. I wanted to make an album that lifted that machismo thing, and what’s more machismo than a cowboy?”
Tree’s other work includes 2020’s “Ugly Is Beautiful” and 2023’s “Alone in a Crowd.”
In addition to Tree, the helicopter was carrying film director Lucas Vignale, cyclist and YouTuber Gaspi Prim, Lucas Brito Chaves, pilot Charles Marsillac and Alexandre Souza.
