Alan Walker Releases Gorgeous Vocal Version of ‘Ignite’
Alan Walker was on a roll in 2018. After a bit of a tumultuous ending to 2017, in which the producer was hit with ghost production accusations, Alan doubled down on his production schedule. Following a series of high-profile features — including his Relift of ‘This Is Me’ on The Greatest Showman soundtrack — Walker had arguably more momentum than ever. On May 11, 2018, he kept the ball rolling with the release of the long-awaited vocal version of ‘Ignite’.
‘Ignite’ Vocal Version
As a stand-alone track, ‘Ignite’ was already a beautiful song. With the addition of vocals, it was elevated to new heights. The vocal version arrived as a true team effort: credited to K-391 and Alan Walker, it featured Norwegian singer Julie Bergan alongside South Korean star Seungri, with the official music video premiering on K-391’s YouTube channel — a nod to the Norwegian producer’s role as the track’s originator. Walker continues to show his production range through his many edits of past tracks.
This is not new behavior for Alan. His biggest hit ever, ‘Faded’, started off as a skeletal structure that picked up steam in the gaming community before being heavily reworked for official release — a track that went on to join the billion-view club on YouTube. Alan Walker has the innate ability to tweak and release new edits that not only keep his fans happy but make his music more accessible to a wider audience.
Check out the vocal version of ‘Ignite’ below.
The Long Road to ‘Ignite’
Few tracks in Walker’s catalog have a lineage like this one. ‘Ignite’ began life as ‘Godzilla’, a 2015 release by K-391 — Norwegian producer Kenneth Nilsen, who like Walker had risen out of the NoCopyrightSounds ecosystem where free-to-use tracks built massive gaming-adjacent audiences. In April 2017, Walker and K-391 reworked it into the instrumental ‘Ignite’, released through MER and Sony as part of the launch campaign for Sony’s Xperia XZs smartphone. Fans spent the following year begging for a full vocal treatment, and the May 2018 release finally delivered it — transforming a fan-favorite instrumental into a fully realized single.
The casting was inspired. Julie Bergan’s soaring verses gave the track its emotional engine, while Seungri’s feature connected the record to the enormous K-pop audience — part of a deliberate push into Asia, where the vocal version was released through Liquid State, the Sony-backed label focused on dance music in the region. The gamble paid off spectacularly: ‘Ignite’ shot to number one in Norway and charted across Scandinavia, while the music video — a story of three struggling young people transported from their troubles through a pair of headphones — racked up hundreds of millions of views.
A Partnership That Kept Going
‘Ignite’ cemented the Walker–K-391 partnership as one of the most productive in the Scandinavian wave. The duo reunited just months later on ‘Different World’ with Sofia Carson, the title track of Walker’s debut album, and K-391 — who had spent years as a respected producer’s producer — found in ‘Ignite’ the signature hit of his career. For Walker, it was further proof of the formula that made him a global phenomenon: patient world-building, community-first releases, and an instinct for knowing exactly when a track was ready for its final form.
