老司机传媒

    I’ve closely followed The Weeknd’s meteoric rise for years, growing to understand the enigmatic artist by the name of Abel Tesfaye. I've fallen in love with his sound, he draws comparisons to Michael Jackson but with more synth––it’s classic RnB but darker. It helps that he’s Canadian, an eccentric Montreal artist who broke onto the scene in the early 2010s with House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence. I never listened to these standalone projects, so I first experienced his work on Trilogy, an album uniting his first three original albums under one title. His music presents a brooding man showered in material possessions and sublime experiences and yet bearing an unshakeable nihilism. A 2017 article by Red Bull seems to capture the experience so well, that Tesfaye “lives the life of a Roman emperor — but all he wants you to know is that it makes him really sad.” He embodies the paradox of having access to everything material and still not seeming happier for it. He separates our expectations of fame with his reality living under the sort of microscope that comes with being able to make the designation that it was his first time selling-out Madison Square Garden. An accomplishment for any artist, Tesfaye does it over and over again.
    Seeing Canadian musicians succeeding at the highest levels brings me a rare sense of satisfaction. In one of the few good news headlines from 2020, the NFL announced that Tesfaye would headline this year’s Super Bowl Halftime show. It’s an honor reserved for only true superstars, musicians at their peak being offered an audience that performers can only dream of. This past Sunday, I took in Abel’s performance during Superbowl LV; for many of my friends, casual fans of his work, it seemed eclectic and strange. But that’s Tesfaye. He’s been becoming a character for almost a year now, since After Hours released in March 2020. The glittery red suit jacket, his black tie fading into the black shirt, and his serial killer black leather gloves: for Abel, it’s all an allusion, building on itself and on a particular style to draw you into an aesthetic experience. At one point in recent weeks, his makeup crew faked a botched plastic surgery on his face producing protruding cheekbones in homage of Michael Jackson’s famous plastic surgery. Preceding the unveiling, Tesfaye wore bandages around his face for nearly a week during all Super Bowl-related publicity. During Sunday’s performance, multiple set pieces would see dancers mimicking Tesfaye’s bandages and garb. Irregardless of Abel’s talent, I wondered how well his style would mesh with such a neutral event like the Super Bowl. Similar to when he was nominated for a Kids Choice Award for “talking 'bout a face numbing off a bag of blow,” (a fact which he croons about on his song “Reminder”), Tesfaye’s attempt to avoid mainstream media and morality seems in some senses unsuccessful. He creates an aesthetic that feeds into itself –– it’s a chaotic, unequivocally dark aura that surrounds his latest album––but it sounds amazing.
    It’s moments like these that people often revisit the question of separating art from artist, wondering if we can view and experience art without it being inextricably linked to the ideals and motives of the artist. For all the time I’ve spent pondering this question regarding Tesfaye, I’m still not certain. In part, I believe that this is the case because I’m still not sure exactly what he wants to say. Thematically, The Weeknd’s music rarely moves beyond contemplating nihilism, self-gratification, escapism and broken relationships. How do such topics lend themselves to music videos filled with allusions to American Psycho, Joker, Casino, and Chinatown? In an Instagram post by , they showed scene by scene comparisons throughout Abel’s music videos. It’s clear, he takes painstaking care to perfect his message, but interpreting its meaning upon release remains an entirely different beast. His work speaks to his being a villain or anti-hero, and the darker tones within his music seem to reflect his own self-perceptions. He’s not a killer or psychopath, but he seems to glorify the darker human potentialities all the same.
    In some ways, I see a parallel between Tesfaye’s art and the poetry of Charles Bukowski. Both artists are driven towards illuminating the underground lifestyle without necessarily endorsing it. Their dealings with the materialism, temporality, poverty, and the general grunge aura surrounding the underbelly of North American culture. It’s the sheen removed from the American Dream, what Tesfaye and Bukowski examine is that which still remains in its aftermath.
“Ya got cigarettes?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, “I got cigarettes.”
“Matches?” she asks. “Enough to burn Rome.”
Through excess and hedonism, both Tesfaye and Bukowski’s art comes alive. And yet, I struggle with exactly how to appreciate the undeniably intriguing aesthetic in the context of my own life. As Bukowski speaks of matches, ‘enough to burn Rome,’ it draws me into his web––the allusion to antiquity, the line’s casual cadence imbued with such meaning, and the linguistic simplicity. Yet, as I’ve gone jogging virtually every evening since my early teens, smoking cigarettes could never be a part of my lifestyle. Abel speaks of excess, and I believe him, knowing full well that I’ll likely never experience a tenth of one of Abel’s weekends. In his falsettos lie fire, in Bukowski’s prose a peril. 

Work Cited
Burgess, O. “The Kids’ Choice Awards are Fine With The Weeknd Trashing Them.” Complex,