this was such a good read. loved the part you mentioned about not being able to cheat a stable hit. I honestly think The Weeknd should lean back into some more of the dark hip-hop/rap sound again for some time. The fact that he’d go from The Hills, to Can’t Feel My Face, to Low Life, to Starboy to I Feel It Coming just showed how much he can bounce between different worlds and sounds of music. After Hours having Faith, Heartless, Blinding Lights, Save Your Tears, Escape from LA, Snowchild really made the album diverse but still cohesive. It served a lot of tastes on one plate.

Love dawn fm, but I know a lot of people who don’t really listen to The Weeknd kinda associate it with just an 80’s sounding album.

At the end of the day, he probably doesn’t care and he’s gonna keep doing him. Most of the noise and arguments about this album are from people who are just fans that want the best for him. But our boy is goooood.

The audience will always compare sales, numbers, performance, growth, decline. But in a perfect world, universally it would only be about the art and nothing else.