Trilogy by The Weeknd
Trilogy is a compilation album by Canadian recording artist The Weeknd, released on 13 November 2012, by Republic Records. It is composed of remastered versions of his 2011 mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence, and three previously-unreleased songs. Upon its release, Trilogy received generally positive reviews from music critics, who reinforced the previous acclaim of the mixtapes, although some found it indulgent. It was promoted with three singles and The Weeknd's concert tour during September to November 2012. The album charted at number five and number four in Canada and the United States, respectively. Trilogy was certified platinum on 16 May 2013 by the Recording Industry Association of America and double platinum on 22 May by Music Canada.
On what was meant to be the last date of his 2022 tour, The Weeknd took the stage at Inglewood, California’s SoFi Stadium, but when he opened his mouth to sing for 80,000 screaming fans, nothing came out. Over the past 14 years, Abel Tesfaye has experienced what you might call pop’s glow-up of the century: When he emerged from obscurity as the faceless voice behind 2011’s noir-ish <i>House of Balloons</i> mixtape, nobody could have guessed that he’d be headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show a decade later. But that moment onstage triggered what Tesfaye has since described as a breakdown, inspiring a period of intense reflection on his life and career—and <i>Hurry Up Tomorrow</i>, his sixth studio album. Tesfaye has called <i>Tomorrow</i> the final chapter in the trilogy he began with 2020’s <i>After Hours</i>, the album that launched him into a new stratosphere of pop success, and continued with 2022’s high-concept <i>Dawn FM</i>. Continuing the narrative of its semi-autobiographical narrator’s journey through a dark night of the soul, <i>Tomorrow</i> doubles as an allegory about fame’s power to destroy: The curtain rises, and it’s all downhill from there. He longs for a time “when my blood never tasted like wine,” he wails over the night-drive synth-pop of “Take Me Back to LA”, and diagnoses fame as a disease on the glittering “Drive”. He’s ready to leave it all behind on “Wake Me Up”, a collaboration with French duo Justice: “No afterlife, no other side,” he sings, sounding entranced by the thought. Its 22 tracks play out like the swan song to end all swan songs, joined by a murderer’s row of guests: Future lends a layer of scuzz to the deceptively sweet R&B slow-burner “Enjoy the Show”, Anitta taps in for the nocturnal baile funk of “São Paulo” and frequent collaborator Lana Del Rey makes an appearance on “The Abyss”, where ominous lyrics like, “What’s the point of staying? It’s going up in flames” hit even harder after LA’s devastating fires in January 2025. Tesfaye has dropped repeated hints that this album won’t just close out the trilogy, but also his existence as The Weeknd. If that’s the case, “Without a Warning” encapsulates the arc of an artist who never let success get in the way of his ambition: “Take me to a time/When I was young/And my heart could take the drugs and heartache without loss/But now my bones are frail/And my voice fails/And my tears fall without a warning/Either way, the crowd will scream my name.”
