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The producers here include perennial sidekick Illangelo as well as Max Martin and Kanye West while the guests are Lana Del Rey, Ed Sheeran and Labrinth. And it’s exciting because the music is just so good.
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But his American successes of the last 12 months – Love Me Harder, a No 7 team-up with Ariana Grande No 3 with Earned It from the 50 Shades Of Grey soundtrack a Top 5 with The Hills and a summer smash hit No 1 with Can’t Feel My Face – have catapulted him to a way higher, rarefied realm whereby The New York Times Magazine can legitimately ask: Can the Weeknd Turn Himself Into the Biggest Pop Star in the World?.īeauty Behind The Madness is exciting because it finds the evidently troubled protagonist of The Weeknd’s music teetering on the brink of a fame that can only make him go to even more interesting places, emotionally speaking, even if what he ends up doing there might cause consternation and doubt. It hasn’t been a blip-free ascent: Kiss Land, his studio debut, didn’t take The Weeknd to the next level on its release in 2013, although it hardly bombed either, entering the US Billboard charts at No 2. In The Weeknd's world, love is messy, but it's also riddled with clichés, as he recycles tired braggadocio about chasing money, girls and parties nearly every song.Well, that character, or the real person behind him anyway, Abel Tesfaye, now finds himself to be one of the biggest acts on the planet. On the wish-fulfillment As You Are, he's something of a musical Magic Mike: crooning over sleepy synths how he'll take a lover despite all her scars and flaws, only to backtrack three songs later on the mawkish Angel, admitting he's a sinner and wishing her luck in finding someone new. "Tell 'em this boy wasn't made for lovin' / tell 'em this heart doesn't stay to one, " the album's stilted, stadium-rock opener Real Life begins, setting the tone for the emotional whiplash The Weeknd subjects himself and others to throughout its 14 tracks. Is this truly the bedroom-soundtrack Messiah we've waited for, or did he lose his touch somewhere on the road to global dominance? The latter, if his polished, but regrettably soulless Beauty (** out of four) is any indication. Which brings us to The Weeknd's second album, Beauty Behind the Madness, arriving Friday with the weight of expectations on its shoulders. He also got what may be 2015's closest thing to a career coronation: a Face duet with Taylor Swift on her 1989 World Tour this summer. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart this month.
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With pop super-producers Max Martin and Peter Svensson behind him, The Weeknd has since charted three top-five smashes of his own - including the Michael Jackson-channeling Can't Feel My Face, which grooved to No. That all changed this past year, with well-placed contributions to the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack and an enviable feature on Ariana Grande's top-10 hit Love Me Harder. And yet, his brooding sound and private persona stymied him from ever crossing over into the mainstream. Through the power of word-of-mouth, the evasive troubadour (real name: Abel Tesfaye) gained an early champion in rap titan Drake and played sold-out shows years before his formal debut album, 2013's Kiss Land, hit. In late 2010, an unknown artist known as The Weeknd slinked onto music blogs and into R&B fans' playlists with his gloomy, carnal love songs.