The Weeknd Turns Tragedy Into Pop on Beauty Behind the Madness
EntertainmentA hopeless romantic—much more hopeless than romantic—The Weeknd seems eternally obsessed with the thought of things dying, whether it’s love, people, dreams or ideas. Less grim possibilities rarely seem to cross his mind. As a narrator, he’s used to dragging his feet through life while bemoaning the frailty of love. On Beauty Behind the Madness, he’s struggling to escape the stasis brought on by a seemingly pointless search for connection. As much as this arbiter of somber, cultish anthems for young people in need of a blues spokesman wants to alter his lifestyle, the idea of change is, for now, just an idea. This is his usual tortured body of work that proves the destructive nature of self-fulfilling prophecies, but this time with a sliver of hope.
The album opens the way a Weeknd album would, with a set of jarring horror chords similar to those on his early single “The Hills.” Then the first line—the first pessimistic one of many—is The Weeknd singing, “Tell ’em this boy wasn’t meant for loving.” You could consider this opening track, “Real Life,” to be an explanation for his alienation over the past few years; a report on why he treats pussy as if it’s a death grip, falls in love with white lines, and makes music about being trapped in a lonely mind state while imprisoning others (including listeners) in the process. After years spent on an island, he now wants more people to hear him as an artist. So while The Madness is inevitably the soundtrack to sobbing in a darkly lit chamber, that chamber is now equipped with a radio.
Anyone wondering whether The Weeknd can succeed on a large scale shouldn’t worry, because The Madness is a solid commercial Weeknd album. With the help of broad-minded producers, he’s made songs for universal playback. Most of it is thoroughly listenable, a version of pop that’s glum but absorbing, music that bends the light into the darkness.
More than his usual moody cave rhythms, he’s chosen pulses and tempos that fill rooms without suffocating them. Besides the Max Martin-produced “Can’t Feel My Face,” the most blatant pop reach is “In the Night,” another bright thesis about numbness. (How bad is the fast life, really?) Surprisingly soulful (for him), “Tell Your Friends” sways on a slow-dance rhythm that Usher or Ne-Yo could own if not for the damaged songwriting that sums up The Weeknd’s whole aesthetic (“I’m that nigga with the hair singing ’bout popping pills, fucking bitches, living life so trill”). The gothic blues story in “Dark Times” has Ed Sheeran humming gloomily about drunk regrets while The Weeknd squeals about bad relationship timing. Its distressed, trudging pace is outmatched only by its lyrics: “Only my mother could love me for me.” He’s truly the king of incessant whining.