Review Summary: Abel Tesfaye v. The Weeknd
In my review of last year’s
Beauty Behind the Madness, I made a big deal out of the undeniably focus-grouped and sanded-down pop leanings of the project. Compared to his prior efforts as The Weeknd,
Beauty… registered as the least “Weeknd” project of his yet, a glossy, gussied-up effort that desperately tries to please everyone, ultimately failing to do anything all that exceptionally while succeeding in doing everything well-enough. The Weeknd, known primarily for his hook-averse, experimental, and exciting output, is gone. In his place is the newly sober, newly minted pop star Abel Tesfaye. And
Starboy serves as the best case for Tesfaye as a pop star yet.
The central thesis of
Starboy is that Tesfaye, a loner and unconventional performer, has become an unlikely star. This newfound stardom has taken his life in complicated new directions (that are ultimately just less-vivid versions of tales he’s already told). He says as much on the title track, “Starboy,” when he talks about how large and empty his house is, or how absolutely divine his cars are. Despite having everything, he’s still uncomfortable with it all, and desperately clings to women and vice to escape the mounting pressures of stardom. If this premise sounds familiar, it’s because Tesfaye has played with this theme extensively before. On his 2013 masterpiece
Echoes of Silence, Tesfaye told the story of a man hitting rock bottom just as his star was about to rise. Songs like “D.D.” and “Next” have the dark knight himself decrying those who’ll only deal with him because of his imminent fame. This same narrative was revisited on the maudlin and dystopian
Kiss Land. Sputnik user Guzzo’s review perfectly sums up what’s wrong with both
Kiss Land and this template in general: it’s become repetitive and formulaic. What was initially exciting and unprecedented on
Echoes is now cookie-cutter. And Tesfaye has shown no intention of varying his lyrical themes, choosing instead to bring them even closer, eschewing any kind of variation or innovation.
One need look no further than songs like “Six Feet Under” or “Party Monster.” On the former, Abel chooses to literally rehash some of his lyrics from his last
Future collaboration, “Low Life.” It plays less like a cool callback and more like an old demo that
Future and the FreeBandz crew rejected. “Party Monster”’s repetitive chorus and uninteresting lyrics make the pretty ritzy production feel like a waste.
In fact, the biggest complaint I have with the album is the lyrics. The Weeknd has never been as frank (no pun intended) and honest as
Frank Ocean, as opaque and poetic as
James Blake, or even as couth and laughably raunchy as
R. Kelly or
Usher. His main appeal as a lyricist has almost always been in his unmatched ability to make the destitute and deplorable alluring. When he talks about “testing out” new glass tables with cocaine on “House of Balloons,” it sounded
fun. As Trilogy progressed, this idea that he had roped you into something you couldn’t escape from, something that initially was fun but quickly turned tragic, made the narrative that much more compelling. Self-destruction had never been so thoroughly engrossing.
But on
Starboy, Abel’s lyrics often lack the allure and passion that made his initial output so engaging. His more braggadocios lyrics often fall back on witless movie puns (“Silence of the Lambos,” “Star Trek roof with that wraith of Khan…”) or bloodless lines about sex (he often just substitutes the word “***” with “love” and calls it a day) and drugs (“she cut that ivory into skinny pieces”). His lyrics have leapt beyond the uncanny valley and fallen into the realm of the uninteresting, and his prior tendencies to eschew hooks or sing-a-long choruses (this is a man who burst into the popular consciousness by exclaiming that this “ain’t a ***ing sing-a-long”) have all but died. To his credit, Tesfaye has become a deft hook writer, but his verses seem cursory at this point.
And there can be no understating the hooks on this thing. They’re often good enough to redeem these songs. “Secrets” really only has one verse (in which he bookends every sentence with the word “love”). But the chorus evokes classic
Michael Jackson and other 80’s acts like Crowded House with eerie accuracy. The production, ebullient and glittery, makes Tesfaye’s voice sound better than it has in half a decade. “Starboy”’s chorus is infectious as all hell, especially as
Daft Punk’s neon synths pierce through the somber pianos and vocoders to elicit genuine joy. Even the weaker hooks on songs like “Attention” and “True Colors” are good enough to save their attendant songs, especially on “Attention” where the awful premise of the song (that a girl is selfish for wanting to be loved or for wanting a non-abusive relationship) makes it almost unpalatable without a good chorus. “Sidewalks,” complete with another excellent verse from rising hip-hop legend
Kendrick Lamar, takes the same brand of rootsy soul production that made “Tell Your Friends” from
Beauty… a highlight and expands on it, giving the album a needed respite from the cyclical grind of the album’s construction. This cycle of glossy 80s pastiche followed by gritty trap number makes listening to the album feel monotonous after a bit, but the production is definitely a highlight here.
Frequent collaborators Doc McKinney and DaHeala return, while new friends like Max Martin, Ali Shaheed Muhammad (hot off a star turn on the new Tribe album) and Ben Billions also put in good work. But the banner contributions to the album come from the world of electronic music, with Cashmere Cat and Daft Punk doing the bulk of the heavy lifting here. The two Daft Punk collaborations are good enough, not exactly groundbreaking but enjoyable. Cashmere Cat’s contributions are more varied and, ultimately, more in line with what we’re used to from The Weeknd at this point. The general cohesion of the album (despite the cyclical nature of the songs’ ordering) is a huge point in its favor.
Overall, this album is a lot like
Beauty Behind the Madness in both intent and in achievement. It’s a disturbingly good pop record, one that belies the unconventional origins of its creator. However, as I noted in my review last year for
BBTM, “Abel's tales of hedonistic self-loathing played well when cohered into a warning or a biography, without that they're mildly scintillating at best and disgustingly over-specific at worst.” That’s still true, and now there’s almost no hope of him returning to the cinematic and experimental music that he used to make. As I stated before, The Weeknd as a piece of counter-culture is dead. In his place is the finely coiffed, vaguely religious titan of pop music that is Abel Tesfaye.
He may not be who we expected, but he’s definitely not a bad substitute.
