MUSIC

We missed The Weeknd

Seven years ago, Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd) was the favourite artist of Tumblr-loving cool kids. His House of Balloons mixtape was stunning, it was edgy, it was dark and it was sexy. His bass-heavy beats were languid and suffocating. His lyrics were as disturbing as they were sexy. The title track was slightly maniacal (when he sang “This. Is. A HAPPY HOUSE. We’re happy here!” you could almost see him wielding a knife). It blew a lot of our minds because we’d never heard anything like that — it was like Cocteau Twins, but R&B.

He sang about sex, drugs, parties, anxiety, depression. Topics extensively covered in music across genres of course, but something about Tesfaye’s way of singing about them resonated deeply with many a millennial.

(Now, of course, every musician with the “alt R&B” tag sounds the same — they’re all “edgy” and their beats sound like they were made on an 808 drum machine submerged in water).

Back then, artists like The Weeknd and Frank Ocean (whose debut mixtape was also released in 2011) were a secret shared by hipster black kids, but they were both too good to just be internet stars — it was only a matter of time before they went mainstream.

While Ocean went on to become a Grammywinning baby D’Angelo (just in terms of the kind of reverence he enjoyed so early in his career), The Weeknd became an MTV star, earning wholly undeserved comparisons to Michael Jackson (come on, Tesfaye can’t even dance, you guys).

After releasing three fantastic mixtapes, Tesfaye made his major label debut with the rather underwhelming Kiss Land (2013), before following it up with the good enough but not amazing Beauty Behind the Madness (2015). 2016’s Starboy album was unnecessarily bloated, but by then “original” Weeknd fans had accepted that the Abel Tesfaye of 2011 was dead and gone. He was too busy attending the Met Gala and dating famous women (first the model Bella Hadid then the singer Selena Gomez) to make gritty but slick broke kid music (he sang about his McLaren P1 on Starboy, yuck).

Then last week he surprise-dropped his new “album” (it’s only six tracks long), titled My Dear Melancholy, (yes, the comma is meant to be there) — and there’s hope yet that maybe House of

Balloons The Weeknd isn’t dead after all.

Following his high-profile break-ups from those high-profile relationships, he’s back to singing about his favourite things: sex and heartbreak (but mainly sex). The EP (that’s what I’m calling it, I don’t care what Apple Music and Abel say) opens with Call Out My Name, which sounds like Earned It, his jam from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack. It’s a lovelorn track that some have said is about Gomez (“I almost cut a piece of myself for your life,” he sings — Gomez had a kidney transplant last year).

But he quickly gets his machismo back on the fantastic second track, Try Me. It’s the closest he’s sounded to the Weeknd of old, singing about lust and sexting with his sweet falsetto, which almost fools you into believing he’s saying something more romantic than what is essentially the musical version of a 2am “you up?” text. He’s pining after an ex (Hadid?) on Wasted Times, moaning about how girls only want him because he’s famous and how he misses his former lover’s sex (“And I know right now that we’re not talkin’/ I hope you know this dick is still an option” — he clearly has no time to sugarcoat it). Two tracks feature French electro artist Gesaffelstein (sounds like a member of Kraftwerk, if you ask me). The first is I Was Never There, which is a tad melodramatic and touches on suicide. The second, which is also the best song on the EP, is Hurt You. It’s one of those effortlesssounding songs, and the melody could easily be slotted in on House of Balloons.

Lyrically it’s very Drake — he sings about a woman he desires, promises to sex her silly but makes it clear that he’s a bad idea: “If it’s love you want again, don’t waste your time/ If you call me up, I’m f **** n’ you on sight”). This is the anthem of f***boys who pretend to be in touch with their feelings but are actually emotionally stunted and don’t know how to be in good relationships.

The final song is Privilege, which ends the EP on the same note it began: emotional, soft, languid and honest. Tesfaye is done pretending that he’s not hurt by his break-ups. He’s in pain and he wants his ex(es) to know it. In one of the lines is a promise to whomever he’s singing about, but it could also be a message to his “Day One” fans (we hope): “I’ma drink the pain away, I’ll be back to my old ways.”

We wish him the best with his mental health, but we hope he delivers more stuff like this.

Welcome back to The Weeknd.

Back then, artists like The Weeknd were a secret shared by hipster black kids

Tesfaye is done pretending that he’s not hurt by his break-ups. He’s in pain