After Hours by The Weeknd
After Hours is the fourth studio album by Canadian singer The Weeknd. The album was released by XO and Republic Records on March 20, 2020. The project has been supported by three singles: "Heartless", "Blinding Lights", and "In Your Eyes". One promotional single has been released as well, the album's title track. It is The Weeknd's first studio album since 2016's Starboy, following the release of the 2018 EP My Dear Melancholy. The project is his first studio album to have no featured artists. Background The Weeknd first teased that he was working on a new album in November 2018, via a performance in which he told the crowd that "Chapter VI was coming soon." On January 12, 2019, Tesfaye then proceeded to further tease the project and its sound by tweeting "no more daytime music" to fans, making media outlets believe that he was set to continue the darker music found in My Dear Melancholy. Following a trio of collaborative singles throughout 2019, on August 6, he further reassured fans that he was working on his fourth studio album. Then after a five month period of silence, on November 24 the single "Blinding Lights" was revealed through a Mercedes-Benz television commercial, with reports of "Heartless" surfacing a day later. The latter song then premiered on the seventh episode of The Weeknd's Memento Mori Beats 1 radio show on November 27, 2019. Which in the hours leading into the release of the radio show episode, The Weeknd announced on social media his return to music with the captions "the fall starts tomorrow night" and "Tonight we start a new brain melting psychotic chapter! Let's go!". Both singles were met with critical and commercial success, with "Heartless" becoming his fourth number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and "Blinding Lights" reaching number one in various countries worldwide. On February 13, 2020, The Weeknd revealed the title of the project "After Hours" through a 48 second teaser. A couple days after the announcement of the album's name, its release date of March 20, 2020, was shared through social media to accompany the title track's release as a promotional single. In the last week leading up to the album's release, After Hours' tracklist was revealed on March 17, 2020. On March 19, 2020, The Weeknd announced that the album is dedicated to long time fan and host of the popular XO Podcast, Lance, who died the night before. The album debuted alongside the eighth episode of Memento Mori on March 20, 2020, with The Weeknd also hosting a Spotify listening session upon its release.
<i>“You can find love, fear, friends, enemies, violence, dancing, sex, demons, angels, loneliness and togetherness all in the After Hours of the night.” —The Weeknd</i> Ever since The Weeknd emerged in 2011 with the mysterious and mesmerising <i>House of Balloons</i>, the Toronto native has kept us on our toes: There was a trio of druggy, lo-fi R&B mixtapes, the Top 40 cake-topper “Can’t Feel My Face” and the glossy, Daft Punk-assisted rebirth that came with 2016’s <i>Starboy</i>. On <i>After Hours</i>, his fourth studio album, the singer returns to early-era Abel Tesfaye—the fragile falsetto, the smoky atmospheres, the whispered confessions. But here, they’re bolstered by some seriously brilliant beatmaking: muted, shuffling drum ’n’ bass (“Hardest to Love”), whistling sirens and staccato trap textures (“Escape From LA") and flickers of French touch, warped dubstep and Chicago drill that have been stretched and bent into abstractions. It’s as if Tesfaye spent the past four years scouring underground warehouse parties for rhythms that could make his low-lit R&B balladry feel hedonistic, thrilling and alive (and the above statement he sent Apple Music about the album seems to confirm that). When the album does lift into moments of brightness, they’re downright radiant: “Scared to Live” is sweeping and sentimental, fit for the final scene in a romantic comedy, and “Blinding Lights”—a Max Martin-produced megahit boosted by a Mercedes-Benz commercial—is about as glitzy, glamorous and gloriously ’80s as it gets.
