The Weeknd
Hurry Up Tomorrow
XO

Could too much of The Weeknd be a bad thing? One can’t help but wonder if even he thinks so, with Abel Tesfaye pronouncing that Hurry Up Tomorrow closes out the trilogy of albums that began with 2020’s After Hours, followed two years later by Dawn FM. Add to this a long-held belief that Tesfaye’s Weeknd alter ego may shift to another name, that he’s more involved than ever in film work (pray it’s better than his HBO series The Idol), and his newest album’s finale referencing “High for This” from his 14-year-old debut mixtape House of Balloons, and all signs point to drastic change.

Whether he eventually drops the Weeknd moniker or not, the spiky, sensually creepy, smooth-crooning space-soul icon holds listeners enthralled (and not always in a good way) with Hurry’s hypnotic, 85-minute opus-y outlook—featuring more quizzical guest stars than an episode of Doctor Odyssey (Anitta, Future, Playboi Carti, Justice, Lana Del Rey, Giorgio Moroder, Florence & the Machine, Travis Scott) while musing existentially on birth, rebirth, death, deliverance, innocence, self-absorption, and something about having his toe stuck in a faucet—brings him full-circle to the tub in which he was born. Yes, Hurry Up Tomorrow is the quintessential soundtrack to The Weeknd at his most narcissistic and singularly self-reflective. You could point to any of his albums as portraits of pridefulness and know in your heart that such super-egoism is the key to loving this guy. But Tomorrow really digs in the deepest—the biggest of all bonfires to his vanities. That is, until it flames out.

Co-produced by longtime collaborator and inveterate stoner Mike Dean (along with Moroder, Justice, Max Martin, Oneohtrix Point Never, Metro Boomin, and Erdem Özler), Hurry Up Tomorrow fits nicely into The Weeknd’s hazy chic catalog. There are more than a few sparkling pop moments of uplift here—“Take Me Back to LA,” for one. Count “Drive” and the Pharrell-produced co-write “Timeless,” too, among Tomorrow’s most hooky, upbeat addresses, both reminiscent of his brighter Starboy days. I don’t need a Weeknd song to be fast or bright to love it—most of his finest moments wallow in pain and host the most somnolent of moods. Here, The Weeknd’s lush, loopy pairings with sequence-disco king Moroder (“Big Sleep”) and the doomed and wonky futurism of “Baptized in Fear” (with OPN and Justice) are just brusque and angry enough to liven up any wake.

Still, the rest of Hurry Up Tomorrow can’t lift itself from the limiting downs and deadweight doldrums of “The Abyss,” “Given Up on Me,” or any number of songs here that refuse to float, despite The Weeknd’s flighty emotional singing or Mike Dean’s cascading synths. What should’ve been something richly elegiac and deeply felt (if, indeed, Hurry Up is his funeral) is instead dead in the water. After the terror of The Idol I never thought I’d say this, but, Abel, stick to acting.

FLOOD

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DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX