By Sean McDonald
Sports Editor
He may have cut off all of his beautiful hair, but The Weeknd certainly left out none of his skills in his newest album, “Starboy.”
“Starboy” astonishes The Weeknd’s fans with experimental tracks, theatrical music videos, and themes relating to the hardships of love and relationships.
The Canada native first found success in 2012, with the release of Trilogy, but didn’t reach stardom until his release of Beauty Behind the Madness in May of 2015. He is well known for his other hits such as “The Hills”, “Acquainted”, and “Can’t Feel my Face”.
The Weeknd was able to include some great names on the album, with production help from Daft Punk, and songs featuring Kendrick Lamar and Future. The Weeknd claims that the album was partially inspired by Prince, The Smiths, Talking Heads, and Bad Brains
Prior to the release of “Starboy”, The Weeknd released a few tracks from the album such as “Starboy,” “False Alarm”, and eventually “Party Monster”. The singles produced an image that showcased The Weeknd’s experimental and emotional side of the upcoming album.
With the addition of outstanding singles, each was accompanied by an emotional and theatrical music video. Each short depicts the emotional trauma as well as borderline lunacy that The Weeknd has gone through in becoming not just a star, but himself as an artist.
A noteworthy fact about the album is that the songs together form a narrative about the hardships of The Weeknd’s musical career and hardships of his personal life. In songs like “Love to Lay” and “Ordinary Life”, The Weeknd’s lyrics tell a story of death, carelessness, and dissatisfaction with relationships.
Not surprisingly, The Weeknd, included various theme about girls throughout the album. He goes on to hint at the underlying theme about the stresses of love and having and having a relationship. The Weeknd’s craving of the classic bad girl is perhaps an indication of his dissatisfaction at his current place in life, most notably in “Ordinary Life”.
“Starboy” is what The Weeknd fans wanted, it’s what they needed, and now it’s what will define him. The shallow-eared listener may not think much of it, but the album is novel like in story and he only has accentuated what he did best on “Beauty Behind the Madness”, making this album well worth a purchase.
Starboy is better overall than Beauty Behind the Madness and that should be an indication of its value, supported by the fact that “Beauty Behind the Madness” has accumulated over 1 billion views for its YouTube music videos.
Check out The Weeknd’s website to access his content
“Starboy” is available on Apple Music, Spotify, and other mainstream music providers.
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