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The Weeknd
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
The Weeknd is the stage name of Abel Tesfaye, born in 1990 in Toronto to Ethiopian immigrants. He grew up in the Scarborough neighbourhood. Tesfaye shows how a pop star can arise in the age of streaming: first anonymously online, then the stadiums. In 2021 he performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, the first Canadian solo artist to be given that performance.
Music and breakthrough
At the end of 2010, without a name or a face, he put three songs on YouTube. In 2011 three mixtapes followed: House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence. House of Balloons in particular sounded dark: alternative R&B about drugs, parties and the loneliness of the night. In 2012 the three mixtapes appeared together as Trilogy. Beauty Behind the Madness (2015) contained the hits Can't Feel My Face and The Hills, and on Starboy (2016) he worked with the French duo Daft Punk. The album After Hours (2020) brought Blinding Lights, written by five writers including Max Martin and Oscar Holter, who also produced it with him.
Influence
Blinding Lights sounds as if it was recorded in the 1980s, with synthesizers that critics compared with a-ha and OMD. In 2021 Billboard declared it the best-performing hit in the history of the Hot 100. It spent 57 weeks in the top ten. On Spotify it became the most-streamed song and the first to reach four billion. In this way The Weeknd connects Max Martin's hit factory with the sound of synth-pop and new wave.
Listening
Blinding Lights · The Weeknd, 2019Apple Music ↗
Discography
Studio albums
- 2013Kiss Land
- 2015Beauty Behind the Madness
- 2016Starboy
- 2020After Hours
- 2022Dawn FM
- 2025Hurry Up Tomorrow
- 2025Hurry Up Tomorrow (Original Motion Picture Score) (soundtrack)
In School of Rock
The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.
- Mixtape 7: The 1980sNL Reader
- Mixtape 12: The Hit FactoryNL Reader
Mentioned in other articles
- Stockholm pop (Max Martin) Genre
Later he wrote for Taylor Swift and The Weeknd, among others.
- Synthwave Genre
The Weeknd, too, used those sounds in Blinding Lights.
- Blinding Lights Song
On 29 November 2019 Blinding Lights by The Weeknd was released.