The Weeknd is an artist who has led multiple lives. Born Abel Tesfaye, he surfed couches as a struggling artist, made experimental mixtapes blending R&B with post-punk and shoegaze, and then ended up playing the Super Bowl. The Weeknd sings like an angel over gloomy R&B, writing songs about life’s underbelly like he’s observed the wickedness firsthand.
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Inviting a Super Bowl audience into life’s seediest corners is one of many disparate realities The Weeknd connects. Before the buzz of the mixtapes had worn off, he released his debut album, Kiss Land, in 2013. He sounded lost on the debut but quickly returned to form on the follow-up, Beauty Behind the Madness, in 2015. The Weeknd was always aiming for stardom. He just needed to return to the dark side of his mixtapes to get there.
They Are Always Watching Us
“The Hills” is about a clandestine relationship, and trying to keep the secret while operating outside prying eyes. With the rapid rise of The Weeknd, he’s attempting to avoid paparazzi in Hollywood’s hills while he rendezvous with a fellow celebrity.
Your man on the road, he doin’ promo
You said, “Keep our business on the low-low”
I’m just tryna get you out the friend zone
’Cause you look even better than the photos
I can’t find your house, send me the info
Driving through the gated residential
Found out I was coming, sent your friends home
Keep on tryna hide it, but your friends know
He sings about the hazards of success, giving in to debauchery. The Weeknd moved from his Toronto home to Los Angeles to record Beauty Behind the Madness. He experienced culture shock at how easy it was for dark impulses to take hold of him.
I only call you when it’s half past five
The only time that I’ll be by your side
I only love it when you touch me, not feel me
When I’m fucked up, that’s the real me
When I’m fucked up, that’s the real me, yeah
Wes Craven’s horror film The Hills Have Eyes inspired the lyrics. The Weeknd debuted the song at SXSW in 2015 under “Mood Music.” But Craven’s horror film gave the song a new title. Someone leaked a clip from the SXSW performance on SoundCloud it went viral. As The Weeknd worked in the studio to finish the song, he obsessively recreated the noises from the leaked live performance, including a fan screaming before the chorus began.
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Wicked Games
DJ Carlo “Illangelo” Montagnese built the track for “The Hills” in the style of The Weeknd’s debut mixtapes. Using Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bad albums as inspiration, Beauty Behind the Madness echoes the alt-R&B of the early mixtapes, albeit with quicker tempos.
Co-producer Emmanuel Nickerson sampled the droning bass line from an obscure film called The Machine, leading to a lawsuit with the film’s composer, Tom Raybould. The sampled phrase sounds ominous, like isolation from a secretive relationship. Intimate connections are deep human bonds, but celebrities live in a prison of fame because the public insists that stars’ personal lives don’t belong to them.
The scream The Weeknd sampled into the track holds multiple layers of meaning. The screaming fans are responsible for the fame-prison. But the song’s scream doesn’t sound like adoration; it sounds like fear. The shrieking voice is a cry for help, connecting the threads of “Thriller’s” zombies and Craven’s horror fantasies.
Five years later, The Weeknd would appear on the cover of his album After Hours with a bloodied face. He continued analyzing Hollywood, and the constant theme was darkness.
Hills have eyes, the hills have eyes
Who are you to judge? Who are you to judge?
Believe the Myth
There’s mysteriousness to using a pseudonym. The Weeknd has divided his life into multiple chapters related to how he’s traveled. He’d never flown before releasing the early mixtapes. His world was insular until it wasn’t. Suddenly, he was living in Los Angeles as the most hyped new R&B artist.
So, who is really singing the songs? Do the albums represent Abel Tesfaye or his alter ego? His pop music is bleak and assumes listeners will buy into the persona. The mixtapes drew a cult audience, and somehow, he turned sex and drugs into mainstream sanitation with his breakthrough album Beauty Behind the Madness. Whether The Weeknd is a bad boy or a character becomes irrelevant when the music sounds this good.
The dichotomy of The Weeknd and Abel Tesfaye mirrors the excess and hollowness of “The Hills.” The unknown kid making mixtapes in 2011 dreamed of California. Then, the dream became a nightmare. Like all good fiction, the story must be convincing.
Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Coachella
