Oliver Tree, the bowl-cut singer behind viral hits like “Life Goes On” and “Miss You,” died Sunday morning when two helicopters collided in midair over Rio de Janeiro. He was 32. The crash killed all six people aboard the two aircraft, and Tree was one of them. Brazilian police confirmed his name on the passenger list, and the news spread across the music world within hours.
If you spent any time online over the past decade, you probably saw Tree without knowing it. The kid with the chili-bowl haircut and the loud ’80s windbreakers riding a tiny scooter into oncoming traffic? That was him. He built a whole career out of looking ridiculous on purpose, then dropping songs that actually stuck in your head for days. Here is what we know about the crash and the man at the center of it.
What Happened Over Rio de Janeiro
The collision happened around 9 a.m. local time on June 14, 2026, over Recreio dos Bandeirantes, a beach neighborhood on the western edge of the city. Two helicopters hit each other in the air and came down fast. One of them was reportedly headed for Angra dos Reis, a popular coastal getaway, while the other was in the middle of refueling. According to Rio Civil Police, five people were in one chopper and the second carried only its pilot.
One of the aircraft slammed into the parking lot of a car dealership full of electric vehicles. The impact set off a fire that swallowed roughly 20 cars. Firefighters at the scene said the burning EVs needed three to four times more water than a normal car fire to put out. Phone videos of the moment spread across social media almost immediately, showing the two helicopters drifting toward each other before a sudden drop and a thick column of smoke.
Who Oliver Tree Actually Was
His full name was Oliver Tree Nickell, and he was born and raised in California. Long before the scooters and the viral fame, he was a teenager messing around with dubstep in the San Francisco Bay Area, performing under the single name “Tree.” He put out his first EP, called “Demons,” back in 2013 on R&S Records. One early flex that fans still bring up: he recorded a cover of Radiohead’s “Karma Police” that reportedly got the approval of Thom Yorke himself.
The real turning point came in 2016, when producer Whethan released “When I’m Down” and put Tree on the map for a much bigger audience. From there he became impossible to ignore. By the time he died, he had pulled together a following of nearly 20 million people across his social media accounts and more than 11 million monthly listeners on Spotify. He was synonymous with that haircut and those bright tracksuits, and he leaned hard into a comedy-first online persona where the joke and the music were the same thing.
He was not slowing down, either. Tree was in the middle of a world tour, and he had been posting from Brazil the day before he died. That detail is what makes this one hit so hard for fans. One day he is filming himself goofing around in Rio, the next his name is on a passenger list handed to aviation authorities.
The Other Five People Who Died
Tree was not the only public figure on board. Sitting in the same helicopter was Gaspi, the stage name of Gaspar Prim, a 23-year-old YouTuber who had become one of Argentina’s most recognizable online personalities. He had more than 2.8 million YouTube subscribers, close to 3 million Instagram followers, and over 75 million total views on his channel. Just weeks earlier, on May 23, he had posted a promo for a new series called “Gaspi Visits Your Home,” writing that it was a project he was in love with.
The full list of victims, released by Rio police, included Tree, Gaspi, Lucas Brito Chaves, Lucas Vignale, and the two pilots, Alexandre Souza and Charles Marsillac. There was a heavy music thread running through the whole group. Lucas Brito Chaves was an electronic and house music producer who had traveled to several countries sharing his work, and even one of the pilots, Charles Marsillac, was a musician on top of flying. The Argentine streaming channel Blender paid tribute to Gaspi soon after the news broke.
The ‘Flowers’ Video Fans Can’t Stop Watching
Within hours of the news, an older Oliver Tree music video started racking up views all over again. The clip for his song “Flowers” shows him standing on a set of stairs positioned directly between two helicopters. Given how he died, fans found that hard to shake. The video also features Tree cleaning and vacuuming a plane, and it ends with him dressed in a pilot’s uniform, waving goodbye and saluting from a plane window.
People flooded the comments with the same kind of reactions. “Is so strange to see these lyrics now,” one fan wrote. There is no hidden message here, just a video that happened to feature aircraft and an artist who liked to play characters. But the timing meant the “Flowers” video got a second life as fans dug through his catalog looking for ways to feel close to him again.
Tributes From Across the Music World
Singer-songwriter Melanie Martinez, who used to date Tree, posted a tribute on her Instagram Story just hours after the news got out. She said she had been “an absolute wreck” and described Tree as “so dedicated to his art.” She wrote that his laugh was “contagious and warm” and called him “a true artist in every way.”
Bebe Rexha, who recorded a song with Tree for the album “Dirty Blonde,” wrote on X that she was “in shock” and learned the news while at a CD signing in New York City. Comedian Whitney Cummings posted one of the most quoted tributes, saying Tree was one of the most talented people on earth. She added that talent “usually comes with an ego and all kinds of headache nonsense,” but that “Oliver is pure love and the best version of what an artist and person can and should be. There’s no silver lining. We lost a giant.” British musician and influencer KSI also posted, saying he couldn’t believe he had to type out a tribute like that at all.
The Interview That Resurfaced
One older interview started circulating again in the days after the crash, and it says a lot about how Tree saw things. Back in April, on The Zach Sang Show, he mentioned that he had arranged for his fortune to be donated after his death rather than handed down to family members. At the time it was just an offhand comment from a 32-year-old with a long career ahead of him. Now fans keep coming back to it as one more piece of the strange, deliberate way he lived.
What Comes Next
Brazilian aviation authorities are now investigating what caused the two helicopters to collide. Rio is known for heavy helicopter traffic, with choppers running constantly for tourism, business trips, and private travel around the city and out to coastal spots like Angra dos Reis. At the time of the early reports, police said they had not yet been able to formally identify the bodies, which is part of why the official confirmations trickled out over a couple of days.
For now, the music is doing what it always does. Fans have been streaming “Life Goes On,” “Miss You,” and “Alien Boy” on repeat and sharing the old videos that made them laugh in the first place. Tree spent his whole career turning himself into a cartoon, scooter crashes and all, and somehow made real songs out of the bit. Losing him at 32, in the middle of a tour, on the other side of the world, is the kind of thing that does not feel real for a while. The millions of fans he built one weird video at a time are feeling that all at once.