Starboy starts the year with a new universe. The Weeknd, also known as Abel Tesfaye, has a new album called. announced Dawn FM, that it comes on January 7th and that it is full with an unusual cast of employees. There are a variety of styles of music: Quincy Jones, Lil Wayne, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Tyler, The Creator. And there is also Jim Carrey.
There’s a new video promo that promises a “new universe of sound” when The Weeknd gets into a car accident, is dragged away by cult members in robes, suddenly ages, shows up at a club, is approached by a cult leader, and appears confused. And then a DJ greets the viewer on 103.5 Dawn FM and states that “You have been groping in the dark for far too long. It is time to step into the light and accept your fate with open arms. “
There are some indications of what the album will sound like, particularly the lead single “Take My Breath”. It starts with a riff that sounds a bit like the “Edge of Seventeen” sample Destiny’s Child used on “Bootylicious”. Poorly – and the sometimes unworldly electronic sounds of Oneohtrix Point Never, which readers may also be the composers of. know Good time and Uncut gemstones.
It’s a type of music The Weeknd has made before. He is covered Poorly‘S “Dirty Diana,“eventually. But” Take My Breath “sounds like an elevation of that sound.
The track’s video has as interesting a setting as its sound. Takes place at an underground rave where everyone has their own Matrix / blade best leather, the video shows people who depend on oxygen tanks during their celebrations and breathe in their masks. Masks have a long history at raves, but these seem to contain some kind of euphoric drug that works great for The Weeknd until a woman chokes him with her braid.
Getting beaten up in his music videos is nothing new to The Weeknd. In one (n Interview with GQ from August 2021, where he discussed Dawn FM, he said the regular violence that occurs against himself in his videos is my removing The Weeknd from Abel. I think a lot of people say, “Oh, he’s suicidal.” It’s not that. I think I took The Weeknd out of the world, but it still finds its way back. “
In the same profile, Tesfaye plays writer Mark Anthony Green, a couple of tracks from the album when it was still in the works.
The music hit the studio like a Mack truck. The new project is packed with party records. Like real party records with lit white tiles on the floor. Quincy Jones meets Giorgio Moroder hits the best party records on the best night of your goddamn life. No anachronistic disco stuff. (Not “cosplay” as Abel put it.) That kind of retro thing is having a moment in pop music right now, but these records are new. Sweaty. Heavy. Soaked suit, party-records-on-the-girl / boy-of-your-dreams.
“It’s the album I’ve always wanted to make,” Abel said. That statement would linger in my brain for days. Just like the music. It became almost impossible to find anything else to listen to. Everything else sounded soft. Or has not grooved enough. Or felt too happy. Or too sad. I knew this wasn’t just the album The Weeknd had always wanted to make; It’s the album we always wanted him to do.
That sounds very promising. Still no idea what Jim Carrey is up to.
