In the past month, I fell into a rabbit hole with The Weeknd’s music. He was always someone that I was vaguely familiar with because of the hits you’d hear on the radio, like “The Hills”, “I Feel It Coming”, and “Starboy”.
I first started getting into The Weeknd when “Blinding Lights” came out. I didn’t really pay attention to it until around April 2020 when I’d go on walks outside to local nature trails to cope with quarantine, and I’d dance in the woods by myself because the song sounds so good.
Despite this, The Weeknd stayed low on my radar, only picking up another song I liked, “Heartless”.It wasn’t until I watched a YouTuber I enjoy, D’angelo Wallace, review the whole album. In his video, “amazing album, horrible behavior (the weeknd – after hours)” he goes over the behavior of the character The Weeknd has developed through his music and the story of the album, and Wallace plays short snippets of each song.
Let me tell you, I got hooked onto the album because of the video.
After I first heard “Alone Again”, I fell in love with the sound, and I finally gave the album a chance. Some of my favorites from the album after listening to the whole thing are “Faith”, “Too Late”, and “Save Your Tears”, but the entire album is an amazing listen.
While I haven’t explored much of his earlier works, I got into “Try Me” from his 2018 album, “My Dear Melancholy,” when he recently released a music video for the song on his YouTube channel. I also got into a much older song, “House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls” from his first album, “Trilogy” released in 2012.
It’s been an interesting journey so far, and I have multiple albums to go through, but I love his sound and I definitely appreciate his music more. I don’t just write him off as another artist that I hear on the radio all the time. His fame is deserved.
I also impulsively bought concert tickets for his “After Hours” tour in April 2022 in Philadelphia. Fingers crossed that the world looks a lot different next year so I could finally attend a concert again.