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Artist The Weeknd: Musical ferryman
Photo: Universal Music
On the cover of »Dawn FM«, Abel Tesfaye looks like many of us probably feel after the long months of the pandemic: aged by years, desperate in the look, careworn in the face, the hair grayed prematurely.
One should imagine that the listeners of his new record are already dead, said Tesfaye recently in an interview with the US magazine "Billboard".
“You're stuck in that state of purgatory, which I always imagine like standing in a traffic jam waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel.
And while you are stuck in traffic, a radio station is running in your car with a radio presenter who helps you to get to the other side.
So it might feel solemn, it might feel bleak, whatever you want to put it, but that's what 'The Dawn' is to me. "
The first half of the album is brilliant
The 31-year-old Canadian poses as a kind of Charon, a musical ferryman who does not accompany his audience on the way to Hades, but back to life.
Many of the songs on his new album are about banishing demons, coming to terms with a guilty conscience about wrongdoing and mistakes.
Especially in interaction with previous and current partners, but also in relation to drugs and depression.
The twilight devotion (dawn = dawn) is always a self-help guide.
Actor and comedian Jim Carrey plays the reassuringly whispering, but sinister seductive radio DJ who ties the pieces from "Dawn FM" together into a flow between the songs.
The first half of the album is brilliant.
In "Gasoline" Tesfaye sings with a mocking British accent, you can hardly recognize him.
In addition, synth sounds rattle and hiss that sound as if they were created in the early eighties.
The Weeknd thus remains true to the reference spectrum set in his hit album "After Hours" - enriched with the hypermodern, nervous science fiction antics of the also Canadian electronic and experimental musician Daniel Lopatin alias Oneohtrix Point Never, who wrote most of the songs of the Albums produced.
From Steve Winwood's “Arc Of A Diver” to British synth and new romantic pop to Hi-NRG, R&B ballads by Shalamar and the “Ghostbusters” soundtrack, everything that the eighties retro trend is currently in here gives away.
"Beat It" sends its regards
"How Do I Make You Love Me" and "Take My Breath", both written by the Swedish hit producer Max Martin and the dance project Swedish House Mafia, are the album's sure chart hits, dark and driving, but in the refrains brightly sparkling and relieving - The Weeknd has never come so close to "Billie Jean" before.
The US rock group REM is mentioned and quoted several times during the course of the album, but what Tesfaye has probably heard more intensely are the successful albums by Michael Jackson: "Off The Wall" and "Thriller" are the godparents of "Dawn FM";
The Weeknd is now confidently reaching for the title of King of Pop.
»Sacrifice« (again with this strange accent) even plays with an alienated guitar motif, »Beat It« sends its regards.
And in the middle of the album, Jackson producer Quincy Jones even comes out with a rueful look at his personal relationship trauma. “Looking back is a bitch, isn't it,” Tesfaye asks rhetorically at the end. Jones has to giggle. A mutual pat on the back of two soul men who apparently have a lot to forgive themselves.
The Weeknd began its career a decade ago in the pop underworld.
He made a name for himself with soul-digging alternative R&B, whose texts were about quick sex and glass tables full of white powders.
However, he initially appeared anonymously.
He also retained his enigmatic public shyness when, in the mid-decade, he was a “motherfuckin 'starboy” with hits like “Can't Feel My Face”, as he called himself sarcastically and self-deprecatingly in the title song of his 2016 album.
Tesfaye poses as a vulnerable anti-hero and is perhaps predestined to remain a pop superstar for years to come - the zeitgeist loves these broken guys who are broken and who pity their music to be loved anyway.
In the meantime Tesfaye is a gifted entertainer with a strong, artistic vision, but in his songs and videos he also repeatedly addresses the downside of fame, the seductions of the luxury lifestyle and his own weaknesses in character, which made him a "bad boy".
In his world, in the shadow of the neon lights, there is no place for smooth, cuddly successful types.
Tesfaye brought this staging to the championship with "After Hours", published in 2020 shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic.
In the content-related video clips for the album, he quotes horror films, the gangster epics of Martin Scorsese and loser ballads such as "Leaving Las Vegas".
They show a party animal who gets caught up in increasingly threatening nocturnal incidents and mysterious contexts, until he is completely beaten and battered in the end.
At the end he appeared with his head completely bandaged, as if he himself, a pop whipping boy, had experienced the injuries of his protagonist - and published a photo in which he looked as if he had been defaced by cosmetic surgery.
A snappy comment on body horror and Michael Jackson's metamorphoses, which he is now openly emulating?
Tesfaye also shares a sense of style with the superstar of the eighties.
Tesfaye had dozens of red suits tailored for his "After Hours" role - a trademark like Jackson's red leather jacket or the glitter glove.
Tesfaye is planning its own series
After the trip through the hell of the casinos and a brutal night, the healing should now follow, the ascent to light, The Weeknd has already arrived on the Pop Olympus. Last year, his single "Blinding Lights" pushed the all-time front runner "The Twist" by Chubby Checker, a single from 1960, from the throne of the "Greatest Hot 100 of All Time" on the major "Billboard" charts. Tesfaye appeared as a show act in the half-time break of the Super Bowl last year and will fill stadiums for the first time on his upcoming tour, if it can take place as planned.
Like almost no other contemporary star, he has internalized that today it is not enough to have a collection of good songs and publish them on the relevant streaming services.
The music has to be good, but the narrative that goes with it is almost more important.
"After Hours" already looked like a TV series, for which there was also a soundtrack.
Tesfaye has long been planning its own six-part series for HBO.
"The Idol" is supposed to take place in the LA nightlife and is about a self-help guru and cult leader who falls for a rising pop star.
The abysses lurk again.
"Dawn FM" is almost too forgiving for him. After the classic but stunning soul ballad "Out Of Time" and the tender love song "Here We Go ... Again" (with Tyler, The Creator) the album loses its drive and pokes in a series of love-drunk pop tunes to them you can groove perfectly in the commuting traffic on the autobahn, which rushes past without much reverberation.
It becomes inedible shortly before the end when rapper Lil Wayne has an unnecessarily misogynous guest appearance in the horned suada "I Heard You're Married", which no longer fits Tesfaye's new role, longing for purification.
"Less Than Zero" is then another Max Martin product, but one that turns the pop hooks too sweet.
You are transported back to the eighties and reminded of Cock Robin and other forgotten one-hit wonders.
Hopefully this is not a glimpse into the musical future of The Weeknd.
Tesfaye has the ability to do something cool,
edgy
and risky, but also child-friendly, his long-time manager raved in a recent interview.
Quincy Jones could once have said the same thing about Michael Jackson.
