Ending a period in your life can be a complex thing. We’d like to be able to take the good parts of it with us, and rest assured we made the most of the time we had. Concepts such as these were almost certainly on The Weeknd’s mind as he was creating his sixth, and final, studio album, “Hurry Up Tomorrow.”
The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, has stated in an interview with Billboard magazine that he intends to “kill” his alter ego, turning this album into a last hurrah for the character. Specifically, he’s “trying to shed that skin and be reborn,” abandoning the persona of The Weeknd for new horizons. Tesfaye clearly has a great deal of passion for music, and in pushing himself as an artist. It is ironic and unfortunate, then, that “Hurry Up Tomorrow” is so disinterested in pushing itself.
This is the most frustrating kind of album. All of the elements for The Weeknd’s perfect finale are present in spades. Tesfaye’s mixture of melodic singing with ethereal backings form a sturdy, catchy foundation for his songs. A star-studded list of featured artists, from rapper Travis Scott to French electronic duo Justice, promises an avalanche of creative ideas. Its hour and a half length suggests an album of epic proportions. Despite these strong individual parts, however, “Hurry Up Tomorrow” never brings out the best in them.
The interconnected nature of the album, for example, is clearly meant to make the entire work feel like one single experience. In theory, combining this approach with The Weeknd’s style should make for an enveloping, contemplative journey. However, the basic pattern of a driving melody from The Weeknd’s vocals accompanied by smooth backings doesn’t vary enough between pieces, causing the music to melt together rather than flow together. This problem is only exacerbated by the tracks featuring other artists. Because the album rarely strays from its initial feel, their sudden appearance comes off as jarring, disrupting the mood established by what surrounds them. One of the most exciting parts of making art is the interaction between different artists’ ideas. “Hurry Up Tomorrow” seems to forget this in favor of forcing its guests to answer to its musical status quo. Perhaps the point of this was to preserve the overall style and mood of “Hurry Up Tomorrow.” If so, then the feature sections only further demonstrate the album’s problem of choosing to tackle all of its tracks in largely the same way.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” clearly positions itself to be the blowout finish of the character of The Weeknd, but its refusal to make the most of that idea is its downfall. Fast to establish what works and slow to stray from it, what could have been the culmination of years of musical experience rapidly overstays its welcome. One can only hope that with the “death” of his musical persona, Tesfaye’s future works will be free from the restrictive choices that hold “Hurry Up Tomorrow” back.