Kavinsky, French DJ-Producer Whose Chilly ‘Nightcall’ Defined ‘Drive,’ Dead at 50

Kavinsky, the French house DJ-producer whose collaborations with the Weeknd and Phoenix were worldwide hits and whose “Nightcall” gave the movie Drive a sleek, detached quality, was found dead at his Paris home on Tuesday evening, according to Reuters. The musician, whose real name was Vincent Belorgey, was 50.

“An inquiry into the cause of death has been opened to ⁠determine the circumstances of the death, as first responders found no suspicious elements at the scene,” ⁠the Paris prosecutor’s office stated.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Kavinksy on social media, saying “Kavinsky, French pride forever.” French culture minister Catherine Pégard called Kavinsky “one of the country’s most singular voices” on social media. “His music will continue to resonate across generations and borders.”

Kavinsky, born in Seine-Saint-Denis in 1975, initially pursued an acting career. He went into music drawing inspiration from 16-bit video games, French house music, and synthwave soundtracks, according to Allmusic. He cut his teeth using a discarded Apple computer, given to him by music producer Mr. Oizo, with software on it. He developed a persona, named Kavinsky, with a backstory that the fictional “Kavinsky” had crashed his Testarossa in 1986 and came back to life two decades later as a zombie to make music. His first release, 1986, was recorded entirely on a vintage Yamaha DX7 keyboard.

“Kavinsky is a character I created because just putting my face on a record sleeve isn’t something that suits me,” he said in 2007. “Showing my own face holds absolutely no interest for me. I’d much rather make music and tell a story, because for me music is linked to images. When I’m making music, I have images in my head of films and television shows I liked when I was little. So I created this story that mixes all those memories together.”

Although he released EPs and singles going back to 2006 and had toured with Daft Punk, he didn’t break into the mainstream until Drive, the 2011 Ryan Gosling movie about a stuntman turned getaway driver, propelled “Nightcall” to prominence. The single was a Top 10 hit in France, where it was certified diamond, and a mainstream pop hit in the U.K., where it was certified gold.

The song “Nightcall” had its own backstory. “[A] zombie guy has a girlfriend before he dies and that’s the only person that knows about him before he died,” he explained in 2011. “‘Nightcall’ is just [about] the zombie guy [who] goes to his girlfriend’s house and says, ‘OK, I’m not the same, we need to talk.’ But the girlfriend already has a new boyfriend and kids and so her life is different and now she doesn’t want to live with him anymore because he’s looking so fucking bad. Because he’s like ugh, ugly, very ugly, and he’s dead so he’s melancholic. And the guy has some regrets and now he’s trying to be a good man, but he can’t because he’s dead and looking bad.”

Kavinsky’s first full-length, 2013’s OutRun, which included “Nightcall,” brought him more success in the U.S., where it reached Number 156 on the Billboard 200 and Number Five on the dance chart. The 2013 single “Odd Look,” which initially featured SebastiAn, was a hit in France, while another version of the song with the Weeknd made it to Number 46 on the U.S. dance chart. Several of Kavinsky’s songs enjoyed second lives in the soundtracks of video games, as well.

A 2024 re-release of “Nightcall,” which featured Phoenix and Angèle, coincided with Kavinsky’s appearance at the Paris Olympics finale that year with those artists. Rolling Stone ranked Phoenix’s performance overall the eighth greatest Olympics musical performance of all time.

His goal, going back to the beginning, was just for people to have fun listening his music. “I think there’s already far too many people who take their music too seriously,” he said in the 2007 interview. “It’s not in my nature to be a serious person; I’m not like that in my day-to-day life, so I’d feel bad to present myself to people as a serious artist. It wouldn’t be true.”