PRINCE SYMBOL ON MICHAEL JACKSON BAD ALBUM FULL
A lot of that is still there in the finished full video, although the murder is not. Scorsese and Price had just worked together on The Color of Money, and the latter’s script was originally about a private school kid who gets killed in a Harlem shootout. But with Dawn FM, he’s given us the one to beat.Jackson had worked with John Landis on the “Thriller” video, and then with Francis Ford Coppola for Captain EO, but for the title track off of his comeback album, he hired Martin Scorsese to direct, working from a script by Richard Price. One week into 2022, it’s obviously impossible to know whether the Weeknd has already delivered the album of the year. It’s consistently distinguished by the Weeknd’s greatest strength, a sense of melody so often missing from contemporary pop, which can sometimes feel like a producer’s amusement park ride, and by his airy and plaintive voice, a next phase beyond gospel-based R&B delivery. The narrative construction of Dawn FM is impressive enough the fact that it’s matched by a similar musical progression-starting more upbeat and dance-based (last year’s hit “Take My Breath” has been extended with a mesmerizing infinity loop pulse reminiscent of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”), dipping into smoother ballads in the middle and then picking back up-is masterful. Seuss-ian rap by Carrey that spells out the need for making peace with yourself too explicitly, but the job has been done.
Over a synth-pop backingthat could be a-ha or A Flock of Seagulls, he admits “I try to hide it, but I know you know me/I try to fight it, but I’d rather be free,” wrapping things up over a simple strummed guitar with “You tried your best with me, I know.” The song is followed by a Dr. “I was so starry-eyed/And now I’m so cynical,” he offers on “Starry Eyes,” and after rattling off some of his recent accomplishments (“front page of Billboard,” “celebrated Super Bowl”) and conveying his innocent wonder at love and life on “Here We Go…Again,” Tyler the Creator jumps in to chant “You gon’ sign this pre-nup,” A phrase on “I Think There’s Someone Else” wraps it up: “I don’t want to be a prisoner of who I used to be.”Īnd then, on Dawn’s final sung track, “Less Than Zero,” the Weeknd just…lets go. In a feather-light voice, the Weeknd sings to a former lover that “The last few months I’ve been working on me, baby/There’s so much trauma in my life.” On several songs, he talks of taking responsibility for his actions and his partners-a long way from his characteristic reckless, empty thrill-seeking-and even insists on monogamy on the percolating “I Heard That You’re Married,” claiming “I’m way too grown for that deceiving.” Jones addresses the impact our upbringing can have on our adult selves, and instantly the album shifts into a more introspective, self-reflective mode. But after the “Thriller”-like strings and scratching guitar of the impeccable “Sacrifice,” a brief and chilling monologue by Quincy Jones changes the tone. “It’s 5 a.m, I’m high again,” he sings (in a posh, put-on British accent) on the Depeche Mode-ish “Gasoline” he follows, on “How Do I Make You Love Me?,” by pleading “I need a breakthrough” over icy, skittering synths that sound like something ripped from a nearby gaming console. The first third of Dawn FM feels like the Weeknd of old. But as he started working on music during the pandemic, he felt that he needed a new direction. Since keeping himself anonymous on his early breakthrough mixtapes, the Weeknd has been defined by his Prince of Darkness persona, with songs that revel in decadence and self-loathing, in erasing pain through drugs and sex that lead to more pain. It culminated in the irresistible, omnipresent “Blinding Lights,” which parked in the Top Ten for a full year and is now the biggest Billboard Hot 100 single of all time. But even without the chance to tour, he dominated our lockdown attention, from his halftime performance at the crowd-free Super Bowl to his controversial and suspicious absence from the Grammy nominations to tabloid coverage of his romantic life.
The Weeknd’s last album, After Hours, was released on March 20, 2020-one week after the pandemic shut down the world.
This balance of classic and daring is perfectly calibrated-the Weeknd has long explored the friction between new wave and old-school R&B, but it’s never felt so confident both timeless and futuristic, familiar but not retro. A long list of collaborators, from Beach Boy Bruce Johnston to Lil’ Wayne, were involved in the project, but pop mastermind Max Martin (Britney Spears, Taylor Swift) and experimental electro-whiz Oneohtrix Point Never are credited alongside Tesfaye as Executive Producers.
0 kommentar(er)
