The chorus hit BBC Radio 1 before most of the world had even heard the track’s new name. ‘I Could Be The One’ arrived as a live exclusive, two of electronic music’s biggest names sharing a moment that listeners were told, plainly and without ceremony, they were getting first. That kind of radio premiere carries its own particular electricity, and this one delivered it.
The track had a history before it had a vocal. Known for years simply as ‘Nick Tim’, it circulated as an instrumental ID, a piece of unfinished business that fans of both Avicii and Nicky Romero had long speculated about. The BBC Radio 1 broadcast changed that permanently, presenting the finished version complete with the lyric that would become its title.
A lyric built around one repeated offer
The song’s emotional core is deceptively simple. ‘I could be the one to make you feel that way, I could be the one to set you free’ carries the full weight of the track across multiple builds and drops, the vocal returning each time with slightly more urgency. ‘It used to be so easy, you and me’ arrives in the verses as the only real softness before the chorus reasserts itself. The writing trusts repetition completely, and the production earns that trust by shifting the emotional texture around the lyric rather than away from it.
The BBC Radio 1 presenter introduced the track with genuine directness: ‘well, premier then, brand new version of what was formerly known as Nick Tim, I could be the one, you heard it here first.’ That line served as both a timestamp and a declaration.
Two separate tours, one shared premiere
The timing of the broadcast had a logistical edge to it. Avicii was set to kick off a tour of Australia the following week. Nicky Romero was due to play a venue in Portrush, Northern Ireland the very next day. The premiere landed in the narrow window between those two commitments, a detail that gave the broadcast an accidental sense of occasion.
The track opens with a crowd reaction cue before the melody begins, a structural choice that places the listener inside a live setting before any lyric arrives. By the time the first chorus lands, the format has already done its work.
The name that stuck
For a track that spent years without a public title, the simplicity of ‘I Could Be The One’ is striking. The lyric is not metaphorical. It is a direct address, repeated until it becomes something closer to a promise than a question.
The Portrush show was still a day away when the broadcast ended. Somewhere in the Netherlands, Nicky Romero had a flight to catch. The chorus kept playing.
