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The Weeknd needed “Can’t Feel My Face” to happen. He listed Michael Jackson and Prince as his influences, but this is the first time he married his seediness to their pop potency. You can argue that it’s The Weeknd’s best song. But it’s better described as a side-step rather than a step-up, since the latter suggests that the work that put him on the map—those three mixtapes: House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence—are lesser than those that helped him climb the charts. They’re not; House of Balloons is still one of the best R&B projects of the decade.
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But although it got him a strong fanbase, coming from something as atmospherically dark as those and owning the top three spots on the Billboard R&B charts (“Can’t Feel My Face,” “The Hills” and “Earned It”) is unprecedented. That’s unprecedented as in no one has ever dominated the chart to that extent before. With those same three songs dancing around the Billboard’s Top 20, The Weeknd has officially fulfilled his pop ambitions. This could only happen if he switched up his moody, debauched persona—a signature that steadily became a dull satellite drifting away the genres he tried to gain footing on.
Having ambitions of pop stardom can be a tricky business. To be a pop star is to consistently be at the center of a constantly shifting zeitgeist and to capture an audience with a chronically short attention span. Thus, to be a pop star is to be in constant transformation. Michael Jackson grew teeth when he moved from Thriller to Bad, and although Bad didn’t equal its predecessor’s success (and nothing did), it still became an essential part of Jackson canon. Prince, whose libertine style makes him a better Weeknd comparison, was remarkably multidimensional: sexual transgression, spontaneous gospel and sparse dance floor grooves were all elements of his cool.
Except for some small glimmers like “Wanderlust,” Kiss Land didn’t show anything transformative or inventive. The debut felt staid despite featuring the same villainous vibe as those mixtapes. The production that once felt lush was now overblown, and the hedonism devolved from thrilling to resigned. The nefarious enigma that The Weeknd built suddenly seemed boring and replaceable. There’s always going be enigmatic figures. Prince was one, but his musicianship and versatility from sleek funk to R&B ballads justified his secrecy. The Weeknd, on the other hand, was getting his mystique-covered-R&B-dude lane taken up by PARTYNEXTDOOR, who even came with a Drake co-sign.
However, we keep going back to those three mixtapes because they were built upon something far more substantial than mystique. House of Balloons was the most momentous R&B project in years; Erykah Badu, The-Dream and the return of Maxwell are really the only high marks of the preceding three years that come to mind. The Weeknd occupied the same after hours space as his OVO co-signer, but he was colder and hit as a fully formed concept. This was a drug addled manipulator disguised as a lover, and it was all a front for an emotional cripple. The hazy production rendered this in visceral brilliance.
And the brilliance of those first three mixtapes still stand even though that character went stale within a year (save for some highlights from the egregiously underrated “Till Dawn (Here Comes The Sun)”). That’s because of an irony: The Weeknd needed to transform as an artist, but those mixtapes were transformative within themselves. The hole of a character rendered his crevices with a sense of thrill. House of Balloons leaped from the bedroom (“What You Need”), to using Siouxsie and the Banshees sample to illustrate a house of sin (“House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls”), to guitar-heavy vindictiveness (On “The Knowing”: “I’mma let you taste her”). It all moves with a remarkable cohesion. Thursday spread the lushness into sparser compositions. The result wasn’t as potent as the debut, but this one felt adventurous, mixing in an arpeggiated acoustic song (“Rolling Stone”) and a freewheeling eight-minute seduction number (“Gone”). Thursday was the risk, and Echoes of Silence was a look at The Weeknd’s pop ambitions and songwriting strength. “Montreal” was The Weeknd at his sleekest, with its sanguine feel given a deeper hue thanks to the inherent beauty of spoken French. But “Dirty Mind” has a “Head,” and “Montreal” is accompanied by something even more corroded: the ugly manipulation on “XO/The Host”/“Initiation.” It was a depravity, but a gripping one.
But The Weeknd has no reason to return to being mixtape Weeknd—the transformative nature of the pop star disallows that. The Weeknd started switching it up a bit in 2014. He cut the aura-building to reveal a talent many slept on: he could sing. Like sing sing in a way few artists can nowadays. He hemmed the moody sonic doo-dats and decided it was OK to feel things. He rejoined Illangelo (notably absent in Kiss Land) for the palatable “The Hills.” By “Can’t Feel My Face” we were still slipping on codeine droplets, but this time on the dance floor and onward to ubiquity. The groovier single isn’t out of character either; the very Weeknd-ish love-as-drug metaphor gets transfigured here: “All the misery was necessary when we’re deep in love.” So we shimmy.
Continued below…
The Weeknd’s transformation as songwriter isn’t that new of a story, though. If you take away the political commentary and subversion on Prince’s Dirty Mind/Controversy, it can be argued that The Weeknd’s initial mixtapes are an analogous moment to Prince’s initial years. The complexities and sexual transgressions were there, but the pop permeance wasn’t. After Kiss Land’s rough spot, 2015 might be The Weeknd’s 1999.
They’re both trimming the crassness for something all-encompassing. This isn’t a compromise. 1999’s title track wasn’t just a party anthem, but the party anthem for the apocalypse—for whatever year it may fall. Prince’s histrionics and nonconformist persona mesh to near-perfection with the album’s potent, sugary synth-funk. He had people dancing to the words, “I sincerely wanna fuck the taste out of your mouth.” What 1999 did was blow up his sin-and-repent themes from his prior work by doubling down on accessibility rather than joylessly pontificating them. Beauty Behind The Madness should do the same for The Weeknd’s debauchery, retrospectively illuminating the greatness of those three mixtapes.
Brian Josephs just noticed there’s a nipple on that House of Balloons cover – @Bklyn_Rock
