The Weeknd
The Weeknd
Abęl Makkonen Tesfaye, known professionally as The Weeknd, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer. In late 2010, Tesfaye anonymously uploaded several songs to YouTube under the name "The Weeknd". He released three nine-track mixtapes throughout 2011: House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence, which were critically acclaimed. The following year, he released a compilation album Trilogy, thirty tracks consisting of remastered versions of the mixtape material and three additional songs. It was released under Republic Records and...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionR&B Singer
Date of Birth16 February 1990
CityToronto, Canada
CountryCanada
When you're traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I've met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.
I usually don't like to 'spoon feed' my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.
I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole 'enigmatic artist' thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.
'House of Balloons' was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.
'Kiss Land' is the story after 'Trilogy'; it's pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it's very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, 'Why Japan?' I simply tell them it's the furthest I've ever been from home. It really is a different planet.
'Trilogy' was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn't left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that's probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that's what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.
Once you've changed who you are or who you've portrayed in your music, the fans, they'll catch it... Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.
When Michael (Jackson) died, it felt like part of my family died. I want [my fans] to know that my music is for them and if, god forbid, anything happened [to me], it would be like a piece of them is gone.
I can never be Michael Jackson or do what he did, but he is definitely a good inspiration: I want to give the kids that feeling.
I've been singing my whole life. I'd randomly sing in the hallways at high school, and all my friends would be like, 'You should sing on 'Canadian Idol'!" It definitely gassed me!
Some people are just born wack, you can't teach certain wackness.
I feel like my singing is not conventional. I mean, if you look at technique, I'm not a technical singer.