As the primary half of his fifth album attracts to shut with a monitor known as Right here We Go … Once more – a phenomenal, beatless ballad blessed with a chord development that remembers the Love Limitless Orchestra’s chic 1973 hit Love’s Theme – Abel Tesfaye permits himself a second of self-congratulation. He hymns his look on the duvet of Billboard journal at the beginning of final yr, suited and booted, smoking a cigar, surrounded by his “kinfolk”: “Catalogue wanting legendary … now we’re cruising on a yacht, we clear.”
By the top of final yr, Tesfaye – or somewhat his alter ego, the Weeknd – was on the duvet of Billboard once more, accompanying a function that provided an oral historical past of the making of Daybreak FM’s predecessor, After Hours. Full with quotes from pals, producers, file firm bosses and the tailor who made the fits he wore within the movies, it was the form of celebration that usually seems in heritage rock magazines and is reserved for august traditional albums. However then, After Hours’ largest hit, Blinding Lights, had simply dethroned Chubby Checker’s deathless 1962 smash The Twist because the prime Billboard 100 single of all time, a designation primarily based on complete weeks on the US chart and the positions held throughout that point.
He was already vastly profitable earlier than After Hours got here out however the triumph of Blinding Lights – its mixture of melancholy and dancefloor propulsion the right complement to the distress and craving for escapism engendered by the pandemic – elevated Tesfaye to much more rarified heights. And Daybreak FM may be very a lot the form of factor you would possibly launch had you latterly been formally topped an all-time nice.
It’s an idea album of kinds, with some lofty concepts concerning the afterlife that appear to be sure up with present affairs and knowledgeable by lockdown. “You’ve been in the dead of night for approach too lengthy, it’s time to step into the sunshine,” gives the opening title monitor, whereas its description of what awaits us within the hereafter (“now that each one future plans have been postponed”) might simply as simply be an outline of the hedonistic nirvana of the dancefloor: “Quickly you’ll be healed, forgiven and refreshed, free from all trauma, ache, guilt and disgrace – it's possible you'll even neglect your title.”
The album comes studded with star company that say one thing about its writer’s standing. The inter-track narration is supplied by Jim Carrey; Quincy Jones rocks up six tracks in, discussing his mom’s psychological sickness and the impact it had on his relationships; Right here We Go… Once more improbably unites Tyler, the Creator and 79-year-old Seashore Boy Bruce Johnston; the manufacturing group pitches collectively Max Martin, Swedish Home Mafia and leftfield digital auteur Oneohtrix Level By no means. And its references appear to put its writer in a lineage of musical greats: other than Right here We Go… Once more’s suggestion of Barry White, the concluding Phantom Remorse By Jim nods to each Prince and Marc Bolan.
However essentially the most noticeable factor about Daybreak FM is how easy and assured it feels, as if Tesfaye has been bolstered somewhat than cowed by its predecessor’s success. Brilliantly written, produced and sung, it gives the charming sound of an artist who is aware of he’s on the prime of his sport, at a blissful level at which each and every melody sticks, and each manufacturing concept works simply so. It doesn’t hassle cravenly chasing the success of Blinding Lights – though Much less Than Zero, which marries that monitor’s clipped beat and retro electronics to an acoustic guitar and excellent refrain, is a large hit single in ready. And it delves additional into the fascination with the 80s that Tesfaye first explored on the mixtapes that kickstarted his profession, with their samples of Dangerous-era Michael Jackson and Kaleidoscope-era Siouxsie and the Banshees.
This curiosity finds its expression all through, from a second half totally consisting of mid-tempo tracks influenced by 80s R&B – uniformly gorgeous songs that by no means slip into pastiche – to the title of Much less Than Zero (presumably a reference to Brett Easton Ellis’s epochal 1985 novel of moneyed, coke-numbed indifference, somewhat than the Elvis Costello tune about Oswald Mosley from which the e book swiped its title). Certainly, Tesfaye’s curiosity within the period of the “second British invasion” is such that he often communicates icy hauteur by slipping into an English accent, which ranges from delicate intonation to what you would possibly name the complete Dick Van Dyke, on Don’t Break My Coronary heart and Gasoline.
That may be a uncommon jarring second on an album so properly accomplished that it’s laborious to pick highlights, though Out of Time is a very attractive ballad, and the second when the wracked electro of How Do I Make You Love Me? segues into Take My Breath – 5 and half euphoric minutes of disco-house, with a riff that remembers Daft Punk’s Da Funk – is pulse-quickening.
College students of the usually vexed relationship between pop stars and the personae they inhabit might word that, after the Weeknd was depicted bloodied and bandaged on his final album cowl, Daybreak FM footage him prematurely wizened and gray, as if his previous excesses have caught up with him. Fairly what that picture is meant to imply isn’t clear however somebody minded to select holes would possibly counsel that the lyrics that stick with the Weeknd’s traditional topics – creepy abusive relationships, overconsumption and jaded small-hours decadence – are beginning to sound as previous because the character seems to be. The one flaw in Daybreak FM is that the imagery within the album’s opening tracks feels very well-worn: “I wrap my fingers round your throat you like it once I all the time squeeze”; “It’s 5am, I’m nihilist”; “You’re providing your self to me like a sacrifice”, and so on, and so on.
Then once more, perhaps it’s meant to suggest maturity born out of bitter expertise. There’s a sure narrative arc to the songs, unbiased of the stuff concerning the afterlife, that sees the Weeknd go from erotic asphyxiation and hoofing up medication to feeling wounded that one in all his conquests is dishonest on her husband with him (“I heard you’re married, lady, and I hate it,” he sings, the unfavourable picture of the cokey hedonism of I Can’t Really feel My Face), then pleading for affection and panicking that he’s caught: “I don’t need to be a prisoner to who I was”.
Maybe it’s purported to be taken along side the album’s afterlife theme, a suggestion that the character is reaching the top of the road and that Tesfaye – who has talked in interviews about eager to “take away the Weeknd from the world” – intends to maneuver on. If that’s true, Daybreak FM is a incredible solution to bow out: 2020s pop music so brilliantly crafted that it causes you to grasp how a lot different 2020s pop music is makeweight.
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