Why The Weeknd's new album is a lacklustre send-off for his superstar persona

Canadian music superstar The Weeknd has released his first album in three years — and it may very well be his last under the lauded artistic persona.

Marking the third chapter of his After Hours trilogy, Hurry Up Tomorrow has 22 tracks and includes features from artists like Future, Lana Del Rey, Playboi Carti, Florence + The Machine and Travis Scott.

Today on Commotion, culture writer Reanna Cruz, comedian Marlon Palmer and entertainment journalist Jackson Weaver join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack Hurry Up Tomorrow and just how much The Weeknd has grown as an artist since his debut in 2009.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Marlon, The Weeknd has been The Weeknd for 16 years now. He's a 35-year-old man, which is to say he's been The Weeknd for half of his life. That is a long time. As you think about this persona — "I'm a creature of the night, who's probably doing drugs and trying to find someone to have sex with" — how has it held up?

Marlon: Well, if you look at the numbers, it's working. Is it translating? Absolutely not, to me. I still don't know what the story is, and listening to this, I don't get a better idea of the story. It all just seems very redundant. I don't know if anybody else feels that…. A lot of the subject matter, a lot of the themes, the textures of the album just seem very repetitive. I'm glad that this is the funeral. I'm glad that we're coming to an end, honestly. I'm at the wake, I'm eating the chicken. I'm good to go.

Elamin: I will say, for the idea that it's not connecting, I buy that point, Marlon. I do think that he's been spending a lot of time with these themes. I think this is well-covered by now, Mr. The Weeknd. Perhaps we could find other things to maybe sing about. Jackson, as you think about the fact that he's so wildly, wildly successful — he's one of the most streamed artists of all time — what's the reason for that, do you think? 

Jackson: I have this theory around celebrity where the way to have lasting celebrity is to have a mystique, an illusion, a curtain between you and the fans. Don't be too accessible. Because once you are, when the criticisms start flying, people realize the emperor wears no clothes. This is a real guy that is not that cool. So when you have other celebrities like Beyoncé, or even Keanu Reeves — people who aren't constantly posting, constantly accessible — they have this kind of legendary status. And that pairs with the kind of persona that a lot of musicians try to go through. Taylor Swift has all these, like, mysteries, trying to piece apart. 

It's an artistic endeavor, sure, but I think it's also a very tactical way to make yourself seem smarter than you are. And I agree with Marlon, I don't think there's a lot under the surface in these songs, but it's at least mysterious enough that people are like, what is he saying? There's another decade to go for us to try and unsolve this riddle. I don't know if there is.

Elamin: First of all, let me just write down these notes: "develop mystique." OK, thank you so much. 

Jackson: Yeah, you're next!

Elamin: I've clearly got to work on this…. If there's one lover of The Weeknd left, it's Reanna Cruz. As a Weeknd fan, does this record deliver for you?

Reanna: Short answer, no. The long answer is that I didn't really like the singles for this record. They underwhelmed me. So when I was pressing play on the album, I was like, "I really hope that this is not the singles," you know, where they're kind of nondescript beats? So there's the Brazilian funk song with Anitta, São Paulo, that is kind of like a watered-down version of baile funk. It just was not my favourite…. Wake Me Up starts in this recreation of Thriller, kind of, right?

Elamin: It's certainly a nod to Thriller, yeah.

Marlon: Was that a direct sample? 

Elamin: It was not a direct sample, no. But however, it was clearly meant to evoke you thinking about Thriller as you listen to it.

Reanna: Right, which is referential considering The Weeknd has spent his whole career shaking these Michael Jackson allegations. And there's a lot of references to current Weeknd, to Weeknd at the beginning of this trilogy. You know, there's a song on the record, Take Me Back to LA. [He] had a song on After Hours, Escape From LA. There's this duality in his music, and I appreciated that; I think the intertextualism of it is really lovely. But I can only take so much, like, disco-influenced synthesizer before I start to get a little crazy.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.