The Weeknd
Dawn FM ★★★★
In a year that’s already threatening to be a hellish experience, said Mikael Wood in the Los Angeles Times, “maybe it makes sense that the year’s first great album should be a feel-good Weeknd joint.” The Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer who debuted a decade ago with a series of “shadowy” R&B mixtapes realized his megastar potential when he teamed up with producer Max Martin in 2015. But he was still playing the part of a cynical, sinister hedonist on 2020’s double-platinum After Hours, which led to his headlining last year’s Super Bowl halftime show. The Weeknd then sat out the Grammys in a protest move that apparently helped force reform of the Recording Academy’s nomination process. His star power will only grow with Dawn FM, a collection of “exquisitely rendered” synth-pop songs that flirt with possible personal fulfillment and are “lush with echoes of Michael Jackson and Depeche Mode.”
Dawn FM conjures a purgatorial state akin to being stuck in gridlock traffic in a tunnel— but with light at the other side and good music on the radio, said Jem Aswad in Variety. To establish the concept, Jim Carrey voices a radio DJ who provides cheery banter between songs. Still, “what matters most is in the grooves.” Doubling down on the new wave synths and smooth Off the Wall vibe he’s long luxuriated in, the Weeknd has delivered his “best and most fully realized album to date.” Despite the record’s embrace of the “slick, synthetic sonics” of that era, “there’s too much joyful anachronism happening to plop it in with the unsubtle ’80s revival washing through pop right now,” said Craig Jenkins in NYMag.com. “The Weeknd’s music has never been easy to nail down, but it’s never been this delightfully slippery.” He’s still singing about varieties of self-indulgent behavior. But if After Hours summarized all the ground the now 31-year-old falsetto crooner had covered so far, Dawn FM “suggests there’s nowhere he can’t take this project going forward.”