America loves trilogy, proper? When the Weeknd first arrived, in 2011, with the three-pronged Home of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence, he was simply 21. Nonetheless babyfaced, nonetheless rising these Basquiat-like freeforms. In these early, mysterious days, a listening occasion at a Manhattan lounge was a landmark second. Over a decade later, the Toronto megastar might need an RIAA plaque for each one who got here as much as him that evening. And, now, Abel Tesfaye’s sixth studio album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, marks the tip of a second trilogy in his catalog. In response to him, it may additionally mark the tip of the Weeknd as we all know it.
The brand new wave ecstasy of 2020’s After Hours and the star-studded retro-pop of 2022’s Daybreak FM lead as much as in the present day’s launch: a 22-track epic steeped within the pitfalls of monumental fame. Impressed by a chaotic tour run that ended with him dropping his voice onstage, Hurry Up Tomorrow reprises Tesfaye’s penchant for hedonism by means of the lens of his life on the highway. Right here’s what it’s worthwhile to know in regards to the longest document of the Weeknd’s profession.
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Wait, Is This Actually the Finish?
In a 2023 interview with W, the Weeknd claimed that Hurry Up Tomorrow would function a skin-shedding for his profession: “The album I’m engaged on now might be my final hurrah because the Weeknd,” he stated. “I’ll nonetheless make music, perhaps as Abel, perhaps because the Weeknd. However I nonetheless wish to kill the Weeknd.” It’s a little bit of an opaque assertion, however that sense of grief and finality carries all through the document’s narrative. It’s a funeral of types. As pitched-up vocals quiver atop boom-bap drums on “Benefit from the Present,” the Weeknd paints out a self-inflicted loss of life to a scorned lover: “I’m not scared, fuck it, overdose/Nobody thought I’d make it previous 24/And when the curtains name, I hope you mourn/And in case you don’t, I hopе you benefit from the fuckin’ present.” By the tip of the album, the Weeknd calls out to heaven in hopes of absolving his ache.
Michael Jackson’s Legacy Lives on By way of “Wake Me Up”
Hurry Up Tomorrow opens with the Weeknd within the throes of nihilistic despair. Doomsday synths and a percussive heartbeat backdrop lyrics that indulge in solitude and beckon towards loss of life. However, earlier than the Weeknd can take a nosedive into a spot of no return, his harmonies crescendo and usher in a vibrant, acquainted rhythm: the infectious boogie of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” It’s not a direct pattern, however followers on-line have been hyped as quickly as they drew the parallel between the Weeknd and the legend he reveres. Each tracks share an affinity for the sinister whereas offsetting their demons with plain danceability.
