Kavinsky has died at the age of 50. The French artist, whose real name was Vincent Belorgey, was found dead at his Paris home during the night of Tuesday, July 28. Early reports indicate the cause could have been a stroke, though an investigation has been opened to determine the circumstances surrounding the death.
Born in 1975 in Seine-Saint-Denis (France), Vincent Belorgey began his career as an actor before making the leap into music in 2005, encouraged by his friends Jackson Fourgeaud and filmmaker Quentin Dupieux. In that period he released his first single, ‘Testarossa Autodrive’, inspired by the Ferrari Testarossa he drove in real life, and he even shared tours with acts such as Daft Punk, Justice, The Rapture and SebastiAn.
Kavinsky was also a fictional character. On stage, Belorgey appeared with blue skin and red eyes to portray a driver who, according to his own mythology, had died in a crash of his Ferrari Testarossa in 1986 and returned twenty years later as a zombie producer of electronic music. His songs developed the story of that alter ego, one of the hallmarks of his artistic universe.
Kavinsky was best known for ‘Nightcall’, his iconic synthwave track that gained international fame after featuring on the soundtrack of the film Drive, starring Ryan Gosling. The song became one of the great electronic anthems of the past decade and helped popularize the retro-futurist aesthetic associated with the artist. Recently, Lady Gaga revived it in a live performance.
Following the global success of ‘Nightcall’, Kavinsky released the single ‘ProtoVision’ and, in 2013, his debut album, ‘OutRun’, considered one of the foundational albums of modern synthwave. After a seven-year hiatus, he returned in 2021 with ‘Renegade’, a teaser for his second album, ‘Reborn’, released the following year.
‘Nightcall’ experienced another huge viral moment in 2024 when Kavinsky performed it at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games. The performance propelled the track to the top of Shazam’s charts in a single day, underscoring the intergenerational reach of one of the major electronic classics of the 21st century.
