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I can’t stress enough how refreshing it has been to spend all day thinking about a new pop album. Shawn Setaro It arrives at a perfect time Dick references, Dizzy Gillespie punchlines. Minus the references to Coachella and JAY-Z, it’s entirely possible to imagine a number of songs on After Hours (including, yes, the one called “In Your Eyes”) coming straight out of Lloyd Dobler’s boombox. The rest of the record continues in a similar vein. Every aspect of “Scared to Live,” for example, is straight out of the Phil Collins playbook, from the echoey snare to the go-ahead-and-change-your-life-girl lyric to the dramatic pause right before the anthemic chorus hits. But on After Hours, the scope expands from the King of Pop to all of late ‘80s pop. That’s shown, if nothing else, by his Michael Jackson fascination- covering “Dirty Diana,” aping the “Billie Jean” video, and the like. On “Snowchild,” he throws things back to two old songs-2011’s “The Morning” and 2015’s “Tell Your Friends”-where he used the line, “Cali is the mission.” Here, he flips it to, “Cali was the mission but now a nigga leaving.” A nice hat tip to longtime fans. Case in point, this impossibly dark (but oddly romantic) line from “Faith”: “But if I OD, I want you to OD right beside me/I want you to follow right behind me/I want you to hold me while I'm smiling/While I’m dying.” He’s clearly been thinking about his catalog, too. On “Faith,” he confesses some of his own mistakes, singing, “Thought I’d be a better man but I lied to me and you.” Then, on “Snowchild,” he flips his famously self-serving phrase, “Never need a bitch, I’m what a bitch,” to admit: “She never need a man, she what a man need.” Of course, this is the Weeknd we’re talking about, so even when he’s being sweet and switching up his ways, he does it in his own sinister way. He’s famous for his dirtbag ways (and he hasn’t completely shed them) but he gives us some clues that he’s been reconsidering some of his old ways. Last month, Abel Tesfaye turned 30 years old. They may not get relentless spins on your local radio station, but album cuts like these are easily the strongest songs on After Hours. On records like “Snowchild” and “Faith,” we get to hear Abel do what he’s really good at, creating a distorted reality with muffled vocals and intoxicating lyrics (“Light a blunt up with the flame/Put that cocaine on a plate/Molly with the purple rain/Cause I lost faith”). But he excels most on the album’s deep cuts.
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And they were all big records that served the necessary purpose of nabbing radio play and late-night TV placements. “Heartless” highlighted his ruthless side, while ballads like “Blinding Lights” showed a softer Abel. The pre-release singles represented certain aspects of the Weeknd that we all love. Shawn Setaro The album cuts are very strong So is this the Weeknd’s pop play with the guy who produced “I Want It That Way”? A return to form with his original music-maker? A move for mainstream hip-hop acceptance alongside Metro? Yes, yes, and yes. But now he’s back, often alongside Metro Boomin. Illangelo notably vanished from the Weeknd’s last two pop-aiming releases, Starboy and My Dear Melancholy. The rest of the tracks, minus album ender “Until I Bleed Out,” feature Abel’s day one guy Illangelo. Pop prince Max Martin helms five of the songs, working alongside frequent collaborator Oscar Holter. With one Tame Impala-sized outlier (the “Repeat After Me” interlude), the production on After Hours is roughly divided into two camps. Here are our first impressions of the Weeknd’s new album, After Hours. After some initial spins (and a few frenzied Slack messages), we’ve put together a list of our early takeaways. Quarantined inside our New York City apartments, the Complex Music staff had plenty of time to run this thing back a few times since it dropped at midnight.
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In what shouldn’t come as a big surprise to longtime Weeknd fans, this is full of debauchery and drugs, but there are also hints at an increasingly self-reflective and mature Abel. And, much like the reality we currently find ourselves in, it’s a dark and somewhat paranoid universe. Limiting outside distractions, he invites us deeper into the world he’s been building for the past decade. The 14-song project finds Abel Tesfaye alone, with no guest features. After months of late-night TV appearances, single releases, and other promo, his fourth studio album, After Hours, has arrived. It’s finally time to see what that the Weeknd’s mysterious, crimson suit-wearing, bloodied character has been up to.