SATURDAY NIGHT WITH THE WEEKND
The journey from edgy underground act to stadium star is complete
I heard about the Weeknd before I ever heard his music. He popped up in some on line discussion about alternative R&B around 2014. The term was something I associated with Frank Ocean’s ‘Channel Orange’ and a few other artists who had roots in black music, but resisted both its cliches and its romantic heart. It was music that represented a very particular 21st century approach to my favorite musical genre and I wasn’t sure if I was down with it or not. Part of my reluctance was that some of the singer’s associated with it had thin voices powered more by pretension than soul.
So I didn’t really catch up to the Weeknd until around 2015 and the double play combo of “Often” and “The Hills” was what made me a fan. The Weeknd, born Abel Makkonen Tesfaye in Toronto, Canada, was no love struck crooner. He was a cynic about love, fixated on sex and drugs and a hedonistic vision of long nights that made you see Toronto as a seedy hellscape. But, as unpleasant as his narratives could be, I was drawn to the music by his high tenor vocals, which had an angelic quality that profoundly contrasted with the orgies he used that voice to describe. Plus, unlike a lot of what was being described as “alt-R&B,” both “Often” and “The Hills” had killer, sing-a-long hooks that had me singing “I can make the pussy rain” while walking down the street.
I went backwards into his mix tapes and found that the Weeknd had been building this raw lyrical vision from his first recordings, but with the melodic range of his material continuing to evolve. By the time of ‘Beauty Behind the Madness’ in 2015 the man was ready for his pop moment and with production by this era’s top hitmaker, Max Martin, the Weeknd became a true pop star with “Can’t Feel My Face.” Using Michael Jackson as the template for his vocals, while not abandoning his drug and sex focused storyteling, the Canadian was able to stay true to himself while expanding his audience.
But it was the next album, ‘Starboy,’ that made it clear the Weeknd’s was a pop star to stay. The biggest hits (the title track and “I Feel It Coming”) were both produced by dance music savants Daft Punk. There was also stellar work by the under the radar writer/producer Doc McKinney, who’d made two of my favorite albums, Esthero’s ‘Breath From Another’ and Res’ ‘How I Do,’ and had worked with the Weeknd on his early mix tapes. I’ve followed the singer’s career with interest over the next few years, enjoying some of the hits, but sometimes feeling he’d boxed himself in to repeatable formular.
I’d never seen the Weeknd live until this past weekend at Met Life Stadium in New Jersey for the second show of his After Hours Til Dawn tour, which had rock star production with a football field long stage, amazing lightning, some fiery pyrotechnics and city scape backdrop that reflected his obsession with the nocturnal world. Though not a dancer, he commanded the huge stage with great energy and performed parts of twenty-nine songs that spanned his career from the early mix tapes onward. The stadium crowd’s median age was late 20s. Mostly groups of young women or couples on dates. And they sang along all night. It’s a bit weird to hear forty thousand people sing “That pussy kill be so vicious” like its a beer commercial, but neither the Weeknd or his fans had one moment of shame. He and his audience had grown up together in the last decade, a journey from underground tapes to stadium tour that reflected his status as one of this eras defining artist.