Abel Tesfaye is ready to ‘kill’ The Weeknd once and for all. Yep, the beloved singer and star of HBO’s upcoming series The Idol is readying his “last hurrah as The Weeknd”, as he believes he’s said everything he can say as under the moniker.
The insights come from a new interview with W Magazine, in which he’s currently sorting out who he will become next, in the wake of filming the upcoming series that deals with many of the same themes that he’d been working on in his recent work.
Why is The Weeknd retiring? Everything we know
Alright, so here’s what he had to say.
“I’m going through a cathartic path right now. It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close the Weeknd chapter. I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd. And I will. Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn,” Tesfaye said.
The Canadian singer also confirmed he’s working on new music, which seems to be a final note on the work he began with 2011’s House of Balloons, his first under the now globally-recognized name.
“This is something I have to do. As The Weeknd, I’ve said everything I can say.”
First up is the soundtrack to The Idol, which he says took inspiration from Pink Floyd and Prince.
Hear the first track from that project, entitled Double Fantasy and featuring Future and co-star Lily Rose Depp, below.
Tesfaye co-created the project with Euphoria helmer Sam Levinson, and his notorious perfectionism has been on full display in the project.
“Film and TV is a new creative muscle for me. I don’t release my music until I think it is great. Why would this be any different?” he told W.
If this move means that he will go back into relative reclusiveness and shy away from the spotlight, that would be well tread territory for the singer, who reflected on how much that fueled his early career in the same conversation.
“I’ve always been the antihero,” Tesfaye said. “In the beginning of my career, I didn’t show myself at all. I didn’t want to be famous. For the first two years, no one knew what I looked like.”
It’s not an act, by the way. He’s always been a rather shy character, though he’s always been confident in his abilities.
“As a child, I loved to hear myself sing,” The Weeknd also said.
“But I was really shy and wouldn’t do it in public. I didn’t know if I was good or not. In high school, my love for films was born. I grew up on The Mask and Jurassic Park. Jim Carrey and dinosaurs! Cinema helped me write better songs, but I thought my ticket out of the hood was music.”
The Weeknd, of course, is actually hugely popular here in the UAE. In fact, he’s the most popular artist in the country, dwarfing all others.
Seriously, you have to find more on that here.
In 2022, Spotify research found that he was the most streamed artist in the country that year, with those numbers set to spike again with his upcoming soundtrack. release.
Read the full piece here.