The producers here include perennial sidekick Illangelo as well as Max Martin and Kanye West while the guests are Lana Del Rey, Ed Sheeran and Labrinth. And it’s exciting because the music is just so good. But his American successes of the last 12 months – Love Me Harder, a No 7 team-up with Ariana Grande No 3 with Earned It from the 50 Shades Of Grey soundtrack a Top 5 with The Hills and a summer smash hit No 1 with Can’t Feel My Face – have catapulted him to a way higher, rarefied realm whereby The New York Times Magazine can legitimately ask: Can the Weeknd Turn Himself Into the Biggest Pop Star in the World?.īeauty Behind The Madness is exciting because it finds the evidently troubled protagonist of The Weeknd’s music teetering on the brink of a fame that can only make him go to even more interesting places, emotionally speaking, even if what he ends up doing there might cause consternation and doubt. It hasn’t been a blip-free ascent: Kiss Land, his studio debut, didn’t take The Weeknd to the next level on its release in 2013, although it hardly bombed either, entering the US Billboard charts at No 2.

Well, that character, or the real person behind him anyway, Abel Tesfaye, now finds himself to be one of the biggest acts on the planet.

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