The Weeknd

[bobbie solo]

have seen Abel twice in the last month. Once as he closed out ACL Sunday 10/11 and tonight at the Prudential Center. Dude has come to dominate the world with this new Max Martin backed record. Funny to see the progression in this thread.

As far as his stage setup & lighting....let's say yet another artist owes a huge debt to Trent & Moment Factory's ideas from 2007-08 through 2013. Funny how many artists have been ripping them off since for their groundbreaking visuals.

He was great both times I saw him. I feel lucky to see a pop/R&B artist at the height of his vocal abilities since I rarely catch this kinda stuff live. Dude's voice is so, so perfect at this point.

Interesting backstory on the making of this record....

Jon Caramanica profiled the once-reclusive The Weeknd for the New York Times, an unlikely fate for a guy who once released music anonymously online, but a completely natural fate for a singer who has collaborated with Ariana Grande and performed with Taylor Swift.And while the story fills in some of the details of Abel Tesfaye’s foggy backstory, some of the most interesting revelations deal with his new collaborations with Max Martin. It all started when he linked up with the Swedish super-producer on Grande’s “Love Me Harder,” which led Tesfaye to tell his label to get him more work with Martin.
“If I’m gonna be the biggest in the world,’’ he told Republic’s urban A&R head, “I need a handful of songs like that.”
But like nearly everything regarding The Weeknd’s path, Tesfaye would only work with Martin on his own terms. According to the piece, Martin’s team “typically solicits little creative input from the talent,” but Tesfaye right away rewrote the “Love Me Harder” verse given to him, and Martin liked the rewrite. And when Tesfaye hunkered down with Martin last fall, he swiftly rejected all of the material Martin’s crew had prewritten for him. So they started working on completely new songs together, and the first result was “In The Night,” which will appear on Beauty Behind The Madness. Like the album’s lead single “Can’t Feel My Face,” it’s said to tap into Tesfaye’s Michael Jackson fixation.
While the feature doesn’t specify whether more Martin-assisted tracks will appear on the album, which is out August 28, it certainly implies Martin had more than a two-song role and was one of the guiding forces of the project.

posted a bunch of clips to my IG...add me..."bronxtalebliss"

setlist for the arena tour:

1. Real Life
2. Losers
3. Acquainted
4. Often
5. High For This
6. The Party & The After Party
7. King Of The Fall / Crew Love / Or Nah / Professional
8. The Morning
9. House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls
10. Tell Your Friends
11. The Birds, Part 1
12. Shameless
13. Earned It
14. Dark Times
15. As You Are
16. Angel
17. D.D. / In The Night
18. Can't Feel My Face
19. Prisoner
20. The Hills
21. Encore- Wicked Games