He started out as an anonymous songwriter and producer who heard his own r’n’b ballads about solitude and decadent parties on a brigade in a clothing store and watched customers react to them. A few records later, he is the author of the most listened song of all time from the 32-year-old Canadian Abel Tesfay, better known by the pseudonym The Weeknd. It’s called Blinding Lights and it comes from the album After Hours.
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The song, which has over two and a half billion plays on Spotify and surpassed Chubby Checker’s hit from the 1960s in just two years of existence, has not been heard by many people live yet.
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Due to the pandemic, The Weeknd had to cancel the world tour, and when he wanted to make it to the prestigious Superbowl Halftime Show, his performance from the stadium stands was watched by 20,000 cardboard shots. In addition, the album After Hours, one of the most successful records in recent years, did not earn a single Grammy nomination.
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Last Friday, The Weeknd came with a new album, Dawn FM, which attacks the same goals as After Hours and maybe even higher. Although the atmosphere remains where The Weeknd fans like it best – deep in nihilism.
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The Weeknd performed at the Superbowl Halftime Show 2021 in front of 20,000 cardboard shots.
Předpeklí Radio
“You’re listening to 103.5 Dawn FM,” the moderator’s voice announces, by the way, belonging to Weeknd’s Hollywood neighbor Jim Carrey. “You have been in the dark for too long. It’s time to step into the light, to accept your destiny with open arms, “Carrey whispers in the ear of the listeners, who are to take on the role of drivers stuck in a traffic jam somewhere in the middle of the tunnel. In fact, of course, this is not just any tunnel. Anyone who has already encountered The Weeknd’s work knows that the singer, with love for everything negative, has a dark twist up his sleeve.
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The new Dawn FM record takes its listeners to hell. To a place where a soul audit needs to be performed. “Are you scared? We will be here to take your hand and make this painless transition, “the moderator’s voice reassures the audience. Is right. When you’re on your way to hell with the biggest hitmaker of the decade, it can be estimated that it won’t be boring at least.
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The second track of the Gasoline album sets a brisk pace. The car radio pours a synth arpeggio on the listeners, evoking a chase on a night highway somewhere in LA “It’s five in the morning, it’s my time again,” sings The Weeknd, who succinctly tells about his own mortality on the track. Nothing else will come after life, so when I die in peace, feel free to wrap my body in a sheet and water it, says Tesfay. In the accompanying clip, everything drives in an even more absurd direction when he beats his older self unconscious at a party of souls stuck in limbo.
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Before you can think about the fact that Conservative circles could call Weeknd a destroyer of Christian values, DJ from the radio Předpeklí is already pouring more and more gems into the audience. It’s hard to say which of the following tracks will be a bigger hit: How Do I Make You Love Me, Take My Breath or maybe Sacrifice. The first half of the album is one of the most fun things The Weeknd has released in his career – and it’s not just that the songs are such obvious hits. A seemingly inconspicuous detail also helps: that the record is composed like a radio mix, in which there is no room for even a second of silence. Add to that the album’s story (Dawn FM actually resembles a concept album) and the cinematic 80’s sound, which was produced by Weekend producers Oneohtrix Point Never and Max Martin, and you have a very engaging experience ahead of you. Dawn FM is perhaps more of a movie than a record.
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The Weeknd director
The Weeknd has been cultivating a film atmosphere in its music for a long time. After all, they make no secret of the fact that filmmaking is his greatest passion. He recently edited a small role in the Safdie brothers’ film, Uncut Gems, but his own music project is increasingly reminiscent of acting. Tesfay’s artistic person, The Weeknd, is supposed to be a decadent neo-romantic who professes love only at half past four in the morning and completely scrapped (as he sings about it in the older song Die For You) and who in one of his biggest hits, I Can’t Feel My Face When I’m With You, likens love to a drug deal.
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The Weeknd is undergoing development, slowly facing us into a rather plastic image, which is helped a lot by Tesfay’s thoughtful visual stylizations. On the previous After Hours album, The Weeknd ran through Las Vegas at night in a red tuxedo with a bloodied face and a slightly crazy smile on his face. He was supposed to impersonate a man who has enjoyed a lot of parties, but now it’s four in the morning and he’s experiencing a range. He is burdened by his own mistakes and a feeling of loneliness. In the aforementioned most listened song of the day, Blinding Lights, The Weeknd tries to reach for his love before the sun rises – as if it were a symbol of the end. Dawn FM sounds like a continuation of Tesfay’s new chapter in life, in which there is no longer time only for fun, but also for repentance. Even The Weeknd will grow old one day. Before I die, I have to deal with my sins, says the singer with a new record, which critics often praise as his most open.
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But The Weeknd was never one of the artists who professed authenticity and who would somehow experience open confessions. Instead, Tesfaye perfects himself in self-styling, in stealing himself, which he can transfer to the edge of conscious self-parody. “I almost died at the disco,” The Weeknd sings in one song on the new album. If you had to explain Weeknd to someone in one verse, it would be this one.
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When the American Grammy Jury did not award Weeknd a single After Hours nomination, the Canadian singer took offense and said that he would never enter his music in the awards again. Maybe he did well. His songs have never been one of the most original contemporary pop has to offer, and the same is true of the new album. Dawn FM’s 80’s aesthetics has dominated the music mainstream for a good few years, if not decades. And it’s not just that you’re stealing Daft Punk (see A Tale By Quincy). The concept of the album framed by the DJ voice is again quite close to the idea that rapper Tyler, The Creator (who, by the way, is a guest on Weeknd’s new record), had a few months ago.
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Despite these allegations, Dawn FM is one of Weeknd’s best records. Few people understood their role as well as Abel Tesfaye understood it. The Weeknd became an expert on hypocrisy. Maybe it’s his immediately recognizable tenor, maybe nihilistic speeches, maybe escapist production referring to ancient times. In any case, you will fail for few as easily and with such delight as The Weeknd. There is no doubt that he will head straight from the tunnel disco party straight to hell.
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