The Weeknd Reveals Plan to Drop Stage Name: What’s Next for Abel Tesfaye?

• Jules Jessurun

  editor online

The popular singer The Weeknd wants to get rid of his stage name. The singer, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, says in an interview with W Magazine that he is “going through a liberating phase right now”. He joins a list of illustrious predecessors who, for various reasons, left behind the name they were known by.

“The album I’m working on right now is probably my last work as The Weeknd,” he says. “This is something I have to do. As The Weeknd, I’ve said everything I want to say.” On Instagram and Twitter, among others, the artist has changed his name to his real name.

According to Fernando Halman, radio DJ at FunX, changing an (artist’s) name is sometimes a good way to draw attention to you again. He mentions, among others, rapper and producer Puff Daddy, who later went on to call himself Diddy.

“Basically it’s marketing. With The Weeknd I think he just wants to bring a new sound. And to your fans you say this way: we’re moving and you have to go to the new store.”

“He’s probably also fulfilled all his contractual obligations, so this could be the start of a breath of fresh air as a creative. I think Abel wants to share new, never-before-told stories with the world that he may not have been able to share from the hit machine The Weeknd.”

Tesfaye says he even wants to “kill” The Weeknd eventually. “I’m trying to get rid of that skin and be reborn,” he says. The words are somewhat reminiscent of how David Bowie once put an end to his successful alter ego Ziggy Stardust.

He created the character of Ziggy Stardust, a rock star alien, in 1972. He made two albums singing about it and toured for two years playing the role of Ziggy Stardust. Bowie said a symbolic goodbye to his character during a concert with the song Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.

But Bowie mainly used Ziggy Stardust as a symbol for his glam rock period and simply continued to use the name David Bowie on his albums. Yet this farewell does show similarities with the farewell of The Weeknd. In both cases, the artists use the parting of a name to mark the end of a very successful period.

Bowie stated that he no longer felt like performing further and that he wanted to concentrate on “other activities”. Indeed, he would never act as the character again after that. But: unlike Tesfaye, David Robert Jones did not say goodbye to his stage name David Bowie. He kept it until his death in 2016.

In the Netherlands, there is more recent example of Caroline van der Leeuw, who had great success as Caro Emerald, but lacked the creative freedom to come up with her own ideas. She now performs under the name The Jordan.

Still, Halman thinks that a well-known artist will not quickly get rid of his or her old name. “You never get rid of your musical baggage. You carry it with you forever. It is part of your artist DNA,” says the DJ, adding that even with Abel Tesfaye, the name The Weeknd will return in small keep appearing on concert posters, for example, to keep attracting old fans.