★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

shuttle

we're all about that bass

"Earned It" is top 5 this year

Weeknd's sell out crossover material is cool enough with me

working w Max Martin. hmm

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/magazine/can-the-weeknd-turn-himself-into-the-biggest-pop-star-in-the-world.html?_r=0

‘‘These kids, you know, they don’t have a Michael Jackson,’’ he says. ‘‘They don’t have a Prince. They don’t have a Whitney. Who else is there? Who else can really do it at this point?’’

I know we've reached the point where "selling out" no longer has the stigma it once did, but this is one of the most cynical things I've read all year. "I changed my sound because I wanted to be as popular as humanly possible."

he had a top 10 hit with Max Martin late last year, in addition to the new one that is at #2 on the charts. i think those songs are better than any of the cool mixtape stuff, so hooray for pop crossover.

lol you are going to eat those words when some awful, hateful smash single from the upcoming album is inescapable this winter

this dude's music had become so fucking stale, thank god he's trying to become a pop star instead of some sadist fantasy for virgin hypebeasts

i don't think it's cynical as much as it was a realization that he had made 85 of the same songs

this dude's music had become so fucking stale, thank god he's trying to become a pop star instead of some sadist fantasy for virgin hypebeasts

― J0rdan S., Monday, July 27, 2015 5:04 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm; anyone surprised that this guy would sell all the way the fuck out once he got the chance is an incredibly poor judge of character

The last time I rooted for something as vile as The Weeknd to top the pop chart was when I rooted for Joe Lieberman's death in 2007.

a realization that he had made 85 of the same songs

and continues to? "earned it" is the only real exception, both the new shits sound similar to his overall aesthetic if not as narcoticized

im mostly surprised he can remain popular with hair that's basically adam duritz but...worse and zero stage presence

yeah I love that in his mind becoming Michael Jackson is as easy as willing himself to be Michael Jackson. Never mind the part where Michael danced and entertained and delighted and made great songs

I don't hear MJ in "Can't Feel My Face" at all! In the chorus he sounds like Steve Miller!

otm; anyone surprised that this guy would sell all the way the fuck out once he got the chance is an incredibly poor judge of character

agree with this, but this wasn't the conventional wisdom around him at all. Critics badly misread him and his intentions, classifying him as an "indie" artist for a long time despite lots of evidence to the contrary

Who? The blinkered ones might be his fans.

dude was on Drake's album in 2011; he was ready.

looking through this thread is fun, also would like to point out that i was otm:

2011 is definitely “Year of the Asshole"
― Don't start the chain you know? (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, June 29, 2011 6:15 AM

Critics badly misread him and his intentions, classifying him as an "indie" artist for a long time despite lots of evidence to the contrary

He was classified as an Indie artist because he released his music independently, on the Internet, through his own independent record label.

I thought he was considered an indie artist because he sampled Beach House.

i never recall a drop off in quality so *fast* as his in my life. from House Of Balloons to Kiss Land in a few years.. i've just never known anything like it.
Kiss Land was just.. jaw droppingly shit.

I don't hear MJ in "Can't Feel My Face" at all! In the chorus he sounds like Steve Miller!

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, July 27, 2015 2:16 PM (3 hours ago)

it's the way he ad libs 'and i love it' in the background of some iterations of the chorus, a truly painful imitation

that said it is indeed better than his prior music

i never recall a drop off in quality so *fast* as his in my life. from House Of Balloons to Kiss Land in a few years.. i've just never known anything like it.
Kiss Land was just.. jaw droppingly shit.

― piscesx,

so one of the few artists to go from garbage to shit in a few years

looking through this thread is fun, also would like to point out that i was otm:

2011 is definitely “Year of the Asshole"
― Don't start the chain you know? (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, June 29, 2011 6:15 AM
― you are extreme, Patti LuPone. (forksclovetofu), Monday, July 27, 2015 5:34 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you weren't ambitious enough to be otm, it's clearly Decade of the Asshole

imo House of Balloons was his strongest, there's still some stuff that's held up on that though i never bought into it as an album experience. Thursday was godfuckingawful NIN-parodic circus music, made no sense that the hype train didn't derail there. Echoes was a bit of a redemption, some good stuff and "Initiation" has to be his most (/only) innovative and interesting song. but Kiss Land was beneath shit, just a complete abomination – the only decent thing associated with it was that Pharrell remix bonus track.

his new stuff doesn't strike me as much better. not going to read that article but the quotes pulled here def suggest someone reaching far beyond his stations, esp considering the one time i've seen him live (in a stadium, opening for a Florence show i reviewed in Philadelphia...all that space swallowed him whole, like he could barely get a note in).

it's weird that people in this thread are suggesting that whether or not the guy is a good live performer will have any effect on him running the pop charts. i mean...have you SEEN some of the other people who've achieved the success he's going after/has already attained?

didn't notice anyone saying anything to that effect. for my part, the live criticism is apropos of: ‘‘These kids, you know, they don’t have a Michael Jackson. They don’t have a Prince. They don’t have a Whitney. Who else is there? Who else can really do it at this point?’’

Do they not have Beyonce in Canada or something

you weren't ambitious enough to be otm, it's clearly Decade of the Asshole

― teenage good-ass kinja turtles (some dude), Tuesday, July 28, 2015

eh, every decade is the decade of the asshole. we're going through a studied weeding of assholes from pop culture through fringe intelligentsia atm on the way to a more meaningful reorganization of norms; i think 2011 was a definite final kick of thoughtless asshole freedom before enough voices began to be encouraged and supported to say "HEY THAT GUY'S AN ASSHOLE" and a statistically meaningful chunk of the (online) population responded "hm, indeed, that guy IS an asshole". In 2024, it will be an olympic sport.

I turn on CNN and it's full of assholes!

yes, but that's their slogan.

I still think that House of Balloons sounds terrific, but everything that I've heard from him, and about him, since has proven just how much of my enjoyment of that record hinged upon my misreading of the Tesfaye persona as having been a character that he was playing.

im mostly surprised he can remain popular with hair that's basically adam duritz but...worse and zero stage presence

― extremely lag∞n postings voice (slothroprhymes), Monday, July 27, 2015 2:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Uhh, you are familiar with

http://basquiat.com/images/homepage-image.jpg

...right? (Although still lol at him so blatantly trying to look like Basquiat)

Also, don't fucking compare a black person's dreads to white person's dreads ever. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't.

I'm definitely on the side of thank god he's doing something useful now re: his pop sellout phase.

I'm sorry rev :/ was not trying to offend

the style works on basqiuat - but basically abel testafaye does is awkward and gross idgi

that should've been "everything testafaye does is awkward and gross" gah

okay, someone sent me the ny times piece, and it was way more interesting than i expected. he's got a great narrative. also had no clue that Trilogy went legit platinum, or that he could pack barclays by himself even before all this pop crossover stuff began. curious now to hear the album

to be fair, Trilogy was a triple disc and only had to sell 1/3 of a million units to be certified platinum. still, the fact that it did is pretty impressive.

he could pack barclays by himself even before all this pop crossover stuff began

The question with stuff like this is always, yeah, but how big a venue can he play outside New York or Los Angeles (or in his case Toronto)?

Trilogy had really good distribution for an "underground"/"indie" release, btw. I got my copy at Target.

I agree that Kiss Land sucked; I've also hated pretty much everything he's done since. That 50 Shades song was terrible (though the idea of him going large-scale with an orchestra is interesting and good, the execution was weak), "Can't Feel My Face" is just dull, and "Often" is so bad it's actually laughable.

He should record a duet with Lana del Rey. That might actually be good.

ha yeah – my Best Buy still boasts a couple copies.

xpost still, the idea that the weeknd could sell 18,000 tickets in any city was a surprise to me. and distro wasn't the concern re: Trilogy for me, i just had no idea that he was affecting culture on that level – though i guess his appearance on one of Take Care's best songs helped open him up big time (doing some search box research now, the fact that each of its three discs counts as an individual "sale" explains a lot, though even then i'm pretty shocked that nearly 350,000 people paid for a Weeknd box set in the span of five months, i.e. well before the Ariana feature and everything since). it's also surprising to me that he's now gunning for, like, Ed Sheeran fame (let alone MJ...), and that caramanica wrote a piece that in some way endorses the idea. also weird that these are the songs responsible for the change, especially "earned it" and "often"...

guess i just heard how bad Kiss Land sucked (and bombed commercially) and figured the writing was on the wall. even though he hasn't musically re-engaged me yet, this redemptive pivot is definitely an interesting turn of events.

350,000 people paid for a Weeknd box set in the span of five months

it was priced like a single disc iirc. i bought it, seemed like a bargain

nyt profile is real lazy, even contains a "r&b was boring before it absorbed the rhythms of 'indie rock' and before the internet invented frank ocean" paragraph

‘These kids, you know, they don’t have a Michael Jackson,’’ he says. ‘‘They don’t have a Prince. They don’t have a Whitney. Who else is there? Who else can really do it at this point?’’

At the time, R.&B. — the genre to which the Weeknd notionally belongs — had atrophied. Years of hybridization had left it a submissive sibling to hip-hop, a bland side dish. But as Tesfaye was emerging, so were similarly heretical soul singers like Frank Ocean and Miguel. They made R.&B. laden with references to indie rock and psychedelia for a younger generation accustomed to unexpected juxtapositions. The Internet had made novelty stars, and it had made mash-ups. But with this class of singers, it began to make auteurs.

Tesfaye’s music was a miasma of sensual, slithering rock and soul, cut with melancholic samples of Siouxsie & the Banshees and Cocteau Twins. He also imported hip-hop’s low rumble and vulgar mind-set, molding them to his sound. He moved at a crawl, his sound a dark vortex.

unpopular opinion: the 50 shades song was better than anything since house of balloons

(low bar I know)

also that wiz khalifa song he was on didn't totally bomb on the charts (wasn't exactly a hit though) so..