WHILE ON THE SURFACE
THE WEEKND DOESN’T COME
ACROSS AS CALCULATING OR
IMAGE CONSCIOUS, THERE’S
MORE AT WORK THERE THAN
MEETS THE EYE.
music is evolving as well, incorporating
more diverse influences while also
becoming even more pop-friendly.
The undeniable ‘80s-with-the-volume-
turned-up pop of ‘Can’t Feel My Face’
is being challenged by his current hit,
‘Starboy’, another up-tempo number
that’s a departure from the moody,
drugged-out sounds found on Kiss
Land (and that still make up a large
part of Beauty Behind the Madness).
He seems to have truly embraced the
mantle of popstar with his newest
music, infusing it with even more ‘80s
shimmer, as well as adding some rock
and roll to his sex and drugs with the
driving punk rhythms on ‘False Alarm’,
the second of his two new singles.
When ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ broke the
way it did in 2015, it felt a little like
The Weeknd had stumbled across
something he didn’t realize we’d all
like so much; with Starboy, it feels like
he’s directly targeting the mainstream,
like a cooler, darker Bruno Mars (but
with street cred).
While on the surface The Weeknd
doesn’t come across as calculating
or image conscious, there’s more at
H O T
RUS S I AN
work there than meets the eye. While
he (reasonably) refused to answer
questions about his once-signature
hairdo (because, yeah, that’s a stupid
question to ask), he also refers to
himself on ‘Tell Your Friends’ as “that
n***a with the hair/Singing ‘bout
poppin’ pills, ‘f***in bitches, livin’ life
so trill”, about as great a dryly self-
effacing line as you’re likely to find in a
pop song this decade.
The Weeknd also shed his trademark
locks ahead of his new album –
likely a wise choice for an artist that
wants to be taken seriously and not
easily reduced to a caricature. He
addresses it head-on in the ‘Starboy’
video, which opens with a mysterious
figure dragging the 2015 version of
The Weeknd, wild dreads and all, into
a room, and brutally murdering him.
The masked man reveals himself as…
2016 Weeknd, with a fresh fade and
slick leather duds.
It’s the latest in The Weeknd’s string of
stellar videos. He grabbed attention
with a triptych of dark and cinematic
shorts for ‘The Hills’, ‘Tell Your Friends’
BRI D E S®
-
MEN’S
and ‘Can’t Feel My Face’, created with
director Grant Singer, melding a
David Lynch/Twin Peaks vibe with the
sex-and-drugs content of the music.
The ‘Starboy’ video (also directed
by Singer) keeps up The Weeknd’s
maybe-it’s-starting-to-get-a-bit-weird
running gag of being killed and/or
mangled in his music videos. He’s
famously set on fire in ‘Can’t Feel My
Face’, is dragged to the desert and
buried in the clip for ‘Tell Your Friends’,
crawls bloodied from an auto wreck
in ‘The Hills’… no pop artist in modern
music video memory has been so
consumed with documenting his own
bloody death and dismemberment
on film.
And it’s great! Any fan of great music
videos (especially those of us old
enough to recall their real heyday
in the late 1980s and through the
1990s) can appreciate the cleverness
on display in the clips for ‘The Hills’
or ‘Starboy’ (which is essentially
three-plus minutes of New Weeknd
literally destroying Old Weeknd in
various ways). But the epic ‘False
Alarm’ video might be his best one
yet, marrying First-Person Shooter
video game visuals with the grittiness
(and bloodiness) of a Michael Mann
or Martin Scorcese movie, courtesy of
director Ilya Naishuller.
Whether The Weeknd becomes the
next Michael Jackson or just the latest
very talented artist to be tagged with
that insurmountable title remains to
be seen. The buzz around Starboy
is growing and there’s a good-to-
excellent chance the album has the
song of next summer on it. And The
Weeknd will likely still be deepening
his mystery on the pop landscape for
a long time to come.
L IFESTYL E
M A G A ZINE
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