UNDERSTANDING THE WEEKND! - THE WEEKND DIDN'T WON GRAMMY, NEVERMIND HE WON PEOPLE HEARTS!

UNDERSTANDING THE WEEKND!

 THE WEEKND DIDN'T WON GRAMMY, NEVERMIND HE WON PEOPLE HEARTS!

Why wouldn't they the more people talk about them the more money they can make attention translates into ticket sales, streams and engagement and one of the easiest ways to get attention as a pop star is by letting everyone know your business but this kind of celebrity is inherently unstable sooner or later everyone.

Cracks under the pressure from ariana grande's prolific run during 2018 - basically the entirety of Kanye's career we've seen again and again that intense fame places a massive burden on an artist's mental health yet many artists continue to trade their peace of mind and privacy for a key into the upper echelon.

but there's one major exception I want to talk about today an artist who above his incredible talent for singing songwriting and production is defined by his enigmatic persona the artist I'm talking about is Able Tesfaye or as he's professionally known The weekend of course we do know a little about the weekend he didn't just randomly pop out of the ground one day singing about cocaine in a Michael Jackson ask falsetto in reality.

Abel Tesfaye was born in Toronto in 1990 and raised in Scarborough a district on the east side of the city his father left when he was very young and never returned and so Abel was raised by his mother and grandmother who taught him how to speak the traditional Ethiopian language Amharic and took him to Ethiopian church service.

Abel has talked about how he only saw his dad a few times growing up but he didn't have any resentment towards him because he wasn't a mean or abusive man just completely absent from his son's life Abel started smoking weed when he was 11 and it didn't take long before he was experimenting with even harder drugs I think it was during this time that the idea of the weekend began to take form while we might not know much about Abel's youth what we do know paints the perfect picture of young man who being an only child raised by a single mother was mostly left alone during his childhood and from that solitude came a sense of confidence that only children often develop as they navigate the world without siblings and enables case without two parents as well in fact in 2007 at the age of 17 Abel dropped out of high school and moved out on his own to the Parkdale section of Toronto without telling anyone this is in fact where the name the weekend comes from in the first place.

From the time Abel left home one weekend and never went back it's an origin story that tells a lot about his character while simultaneously being secretive and mysterious Abel unlike many artists didn't release a long list of ruffshodd EPS or mixtapes before finding his voice he had no real musical track record until 2010 when he met Jeremy Rose a producer who was working on his idea for a dark R&B project they made a few songs together and Rose let able keep the tracks for himself as long as he promised that he would give Rose credit if he ever released them a few months later Abel uploaded three songs to YouTube under the name The Weeknd and for a few different reasons the song started getting a lot of attention online.

Let's break that down real quick firstly I think one of the biggest things that helped Abel blow up with just three songs out was anonymity literally no one knew who he was even to the point where in Anthony fantana's review of the first weekend mixtape he incorrectly refers to the weekend as a group there were countless articles dedicated to decoding the clues left by Abel on social media or in his songs but the truth of the matter is that Abel wasn't exactly trying to hide who he was rather he was just being himself and as we learned from the story about how he got his name he had always been a quiet secretive guy.

The weekend also got his start as a protege of Drake who was only a few years into his own career but already a huge celebrity in Toronto the story goes that Drake showed up to the weekends first live performance asking him about a potential collaboration after the show and so the weekend's big break came after just a year and a half in the industry.

When he contributed to four songs on Drake's take care as a writer and a featured artist but during the entire first year or two of his career the weekend didn't take any interviews at all despite the huge buzz he was building in the music industry instead he communicated with fans on Twitter he released two more free mixtapes under his own XO label in 2011 Thursday and echoes of silence after releasing a third mixtape he compiled and officially released them together as trilogy a compilation album that despite containing only a few new songs peaked at number four in the US and number five in Canada at this point the buzz around the weekend was so massive that his unofficial EXO label was signed to Republic one of the biggest divisions of UMG the largest record label in the world at this point the weekend was one of the fastest growing artists around he played Coachella toured North America and Europe and his first album kiss land peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 in an interview with complex.

 Abel talked about what the name kiss land meant to him and how its meaning manifested itself throughout the album's lyrics and production he said kiss land symbolizes the tour life but it's a world that I created in my head just like house of balloons symbolizes Toronto and my experiences there but it's a world that I created when I think about kiss land I think about a terrifying place it's a place I've never been to before that I'm very unfamiliar with a lot of it is inspired by filmmakers like John Carpenter David Cronenberg and Ridley Scott because they know how to capture fear that's what kiss land is to me an environment that's just honest fear I don't know who I am right now and I'm doing all these outlandish things in these settings that I'm not familiar with to me it's the most terrifying thing ever so when you hear the screams in the record and you hear all these horror references and you feel scared listen to the music because I want you to feel what I'm feeling kiss land is like a horror movie.

 The Weeknd released Beauty behind the madness in 2015 the album featured interesting production with distorted beats and an all-around sense of darkness and in my opinion it'll probably go on to be one of the defining albums of the 2010 when people look back and want to know what music was like in the 2010s the same way we might listen to Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin today I think Beauty behind the madness is going to be one of those kinds of albums it just encapsulate s' the sound of its time very well in terms of production writing subject matter and presentation and Beauty behind the madness wasn't just good even though it's my favorite album by the weekend so far it also sold ridiculously well it debuted at number one in eight countries selling more than 400,000 copies in its first week to put it simply at this point the weekend was just massive he became the first male artist to simultaneously hold the top three spots on the Billboard R&B chart and he headlined three festivals in 2015 Lollapalooza the hard summer music festival and the Bumbershoot festival but his journey to achieve artistic integrity while also dominating the popular music charts wasn't over yet even though the weekend has only released one album in the last four years.

He's hardly been dormant his third album star boy went number one again featuring collaborations with Daft Punk ,future Kendrick Lamar and Lana Del Ray while critics didn't consider it quite as innovative or original as Beauty behind the madness it once again sold in massive quantities with 350,000 copies sold in the first week star boy won a Grammy for Best urban album of 2016 making it the weekend's second time winning that award the album racked up billions of streams on Spotify especially on the Daft Punk collaborations star boy and I feel it coming in the last couple of years the weekend also signed in half to his XO label worked on the Black Panther soundtrack album and released my dear melancholy a darker minimal project that focused on his experiences with a few high-profile.

Yet private relationships he had been through specifically those with Bella Hadid and Selena Gomez My dear melancholy was in some ways the opposite of its predecessor star boy whereas star boy was an hour long with 18 tracks My dear melancholy features only seven songs with a runtime of 25 minutes and despite its differences it hit number one on the Billboard 200 again being the shortest album to do so in eight years.

The Weeknd's fourth album After-hours was released recently and its leading singles have already achieved massive streaming numbers in the hundreds of millions he continues to stand alone as one of the single most successful artists of our generation and more than that his brand is amazingly strong songs by the weekend have an overwhelming air of darkness tension longing and above all an altered state of mind his music has risen above the pack as our generations soundtrack for drinking hooking up getting high or going out the things that we do despite knowing deep inside it might be better if we didn't partake and the weekend has been consistently working on mastering that persona of secrecy and darkness ever since he walked out of his mom's house in Toronto for the last time at the age of 17 while the weekend is one of the most popular performers alive today and we should be thankful that he was born in our generation.

When the  2021 Grammy nominations were announced on Tuesday (Nov. 24), there was one name that was noticeably absent from the list. The Weeknd did not receive a single nomination for his After Hours album and its breakout hit "Blinding Lights","In your eyes" and "Heartless"

Both the single and the album had undeniable commercial success. "Blinding Lights" spent four weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, and also broke the record for most weeks in the Hot 100's top 10. After Hours, meanwhile, debuted at the summit of the Billboard 200 and had the biggest streaming week for an R&B album ever.

The Weeknd was understandably frustrated about the snub, and took to Twitter to slam the "corrupt" Grammys and reveal that he went from "planning a performance" at the awards show "to not being invited."

Here's what The weeknd said on twitter -