★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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..

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

otm

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.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Tuesday, July 28, 2015 8:01 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what specifically is laughable about often?? it's like the best tropes of his earlier material of his earlier work formatted into one super catchy single. it is masterfully structured and executed.

the above criticism that abel has made the same song 85 times is understandable but i think some of the post-trilogy tracks (often, twenty eight, the hills) elevate the aesthetic to a new level of pop.

Junii Waves 3 months ago
Yo no gay shit but this track is hot The Weeknd only makes hits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PqGrfdAw90

there's an untapped monetary market on acts like lana, the weeknd, frank ocean and to lesser extents arctic monkeys and the 1975. these acts embody youth culture and are amongst the true superstars of our age. despite having huge fanbases their success hasn't translated from internet fame to real world viability. this could be outdated ideology, but the opportunity for profit still exists. because of their youthful, immense online followings, they should be turned into household names alike rihanna and kanye (artists who derive great influence from younger internet oriented artists themselves).

this is how i rationalize the weeknd's shift into top 40 oriented material. it makes sense on a purely artistic trajectory too. instead of making sad fetishizing drug music, make happy fetishizing drug music. crazed disco influenced cocaine cowboy is a very viable cultural avatar. it's almost like the weeknd is working backwards; he had his thematic hangover/OD (trilogy) before the party/binge (can't feel my face/BBTM ).

5 writers for the current single. FIVE!

max martin and ali payami produced, savan kotecha and peter svensson did the topline, abel did something somewhere, where's the problem

nobody inform this clown how many writers were on the trilogy tracks, he may not survive

5 writers for the current single. FIVE!

the return of the "beck vs beyonce" meme makes an unexpected appearance.

i too got the trilogy boxset cos it was cheap and nicely packaged, and i actually liked the mixtapes.
never bothered with the album, but have since been wondering how on earth a single foggy photo of him in the dark gets so much traction on facebook.

now i know.

that paragraph re: how r&b had 'atrophied' prior to the supposed wave of indie-rock-influenced artists (or perhaps more accurately, the p4k crowd perking up its ears and finally deciding it was worth covering) is nauseating

besides i'm sure it won't be long before that period of the 'emergence' of 'auteurs' is also written off as atrophied, as arguably some of its figurehead artists are already stooping to (sometimes literally) masturbatory self-parody to significantly diminishing returns. altho who knows, decades-old rockist tropes re: auteurism continue to be received as fresh all this time later so maybe i'm talking nonsense.

yeah i enjoyed the piece because the narrative is pretty interesting, but there are some strange contentions in there. was struck by how both the article and the weeknd himself seem to have this revisionist bent about his older music. the stuff on kiss land was pretty optimistic in its aspiration to wind up on pop radio (something i wouldn't have inferred it was trying to do), but all this "i hated choruses, i hated structure" talk doesn't totally add up. didn't house of balloons blow up because songs like "what you need" and "the morning" had really clearcut, commanding choruses (and verses, for that matter)? like, echoes had "initiation," but it also opened with an MJ cover

doc mckinney and illangelo (and even drake, aside from a few mentions of his manager) being absent from the piece was weird

yawn

that paragraph re: how r&b had 'atrophied' prior to the supposed wave of indie-rock-influenced artists (or perhaps more accurately, the p4k crowd perking up its ears and finally deciding it was worth covering) is nauseating

Look I was writing a lot of p4k reviews of R&B in the 2006-2010 era, it's not my fault they averaged about five page views per review.

Aside from the strange generalisation about R&B that's a great profile. Unusual to see someone so brazenly committed to going for mainstream success. Most people would try to cover that up.

When "mainstream success" is 100,000 copies sold, what's the point of being secretive about it?

Point missed

I guess I'd need to know how you define "most people."

Most artists who started out with lots of underground cachet - free mixtapes, no interviews — wouldn't be quite so blatant about saying they now want to be the biggest pop star in the world and leaping into bed with Max Martin, Sia and 50 Shades of Grey. They'd dress it up a bit and pretend they haven't really changed that much or compromised themselves for success. Apart from Catfish & the Bottlemen, who are reading from the Oasis playbook, I haven't come across such unvarnished ambition in ages.

this new album is easily gonna sell a million tho

yeah i've asked a lot of artists about making obviously more pop-oriented music and most of them hem and haw and say nothing has changed, it's actually kinda nice to read a guy just being like "yeah i just wanna be super famous"

MIguel's been pretty clear about wanting hits, no? Especially after the experience with the debut.

Never cared for his music, only thing I've enjoyed from him is Can't Feel My Face.

surely miguel can't be as focused on getting hits now, especially after dropping an album that has basically no singles on it except "coffee"

This guy has zero charisma and/or relatability though. Who the hell would want to have sex with him while sober?