Despite The Weeknd explaining the thesis behind his latest record, After Hours, it has to be said that such a “musing” already feels archaic at this point. For the sentiment, “You can find love, fear, friends, enemies, violence, sex, demons, angels, loneliness and togetherness all in the After Hours of the night,” just doesn’t ring true anymore. Because god knows there ain’t no after hours party left to find, let alone a regularly opened club during “normal hours” at this juncture. And, to be frank, maybe there shouldn’t be ever again seeing as how humans themselves are a disease to be avoided, all rife with contagion and foulness. To that point, The Weeknd’s decidedly retro predilections (the ones that have often prompted respective fanbases to draw a parallel between him and Lana Del Rey) on this album are in keeping with reflecting on a different era (i.e. the 80s), both auditorily and in terms of one’s complex dynamic with excesses. What’s more, as his first release since the 2018 EP, My Dear Melancholy, The Weeknd is in a decidedly more “upbeat” (by his standards) mood than when he put out this Selena Gomez-tarring offering (Gomez then, in turn, tarred, once again, Justin Bieber earlier this year).
Establishing a kind of newfound independence on the first track, “Alone Again,” The Weeknd likely had no idea how resonant such a title would be as most of the world was forced to go into quarantine this month. Of course, the running narrative throughout this introduction into the world of After Hours is, once more, an exploration of his addiction, another rock bottom (like Bojack Horseman) serving as yet another source of creative inspiration. His battle with two different personas, the smooth-talking pop star every girl wants to “treat her right” and the scumbag, Vegas/drug-addicted man-whore comes to an immediate head on this song with The Weeknd’s vow to: “Take off my disguise/I’m living someone else’s life/Suppressing who I was inside/So I throw two thousand ones in the sky.” That means tossing some cash around at the strip club, yes. A tame start to one of his nights, the kind of nights he prefers most in Vegas (when it was still open), which is why he throws in for good measure, “In Vegas, I feel so at home.” Where else should a sex monster fueled by his addictions feel most comfortable, after all?
“When I’m fucked up that’s the real me,” Abel once said, and it seems to hold truer than ever on After Hours, a title that also suggests the darker alter ego is allowed to flourish best in the night. Though, in The Weeknd’s case, he knows it is not an “alternate persona” so much as his purest one. The oxymoronic statement, “Take me down to your altitude” suggests The Weeknd only wants to free himself from the burdens of fame (which aren’t very burdensome when you realize you have a way better mansion to self-quarantine in than the average). That he wants to tell caution to be damned as he falls from grace and sinks back into the depths of sin. With the chorus, “I don’t know if I can be alone again,” there is a twofold meaning. On the one hand, if The Weeknd is left alone to his own devices, he’ll start abusing substances again. On the other, if he feels alone even in the crowds (again, an obsolete term) of the after hours cesspools, it will likely prompt him to use again as well. The need to numb is present in both scenarios.
Alas, long ago, it was already “Too Late,” a song title that also applies to the album’s motif. With a synth-heavy sound that’s rife for being played in a London nightclub of the mid-00s (because it can’t be stressed enough that The Weeknd’s highlight of a certain lifestyle is outmoded), he laments, “It’s way too late to save my soul.” Concluding with a sound that comes off like a remix of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme, The Weeknd thusly accents the horror of living in the prison of his own existence, one compounded by the ironically named City of Angels (“I can’t trust where I live anymore” being overt shade at Los Angeles). The fact that “It’s way too late to save my–” is cut off in mid-sentence as the dramatic ending to the track confirms The Weeknd’s belief in his lack of being any sort of worthwhile offering to the gods, particularly when all his interests rest down in hell (Hell.A., as L.A. is sometimes referred to).
The more tranquil-sounding “Hardest to Love” is one of many explorations of The Weeknd’s admission to culpability in his penchant for self-sabotaging behavior–and its effects on the ones he tries his best to love. Most notably, Bella Hadid, who, yes, he’s still singing about as he mourns the way he treated her, as well as the demise of their relationship at his own hands. Accordingly, he croons, “’Cause I’ve been the hardest to love/You’re tryna let me go, yeah/And I can see it, I can see it.” The Weeknd seems to incorporate delusional wishful thinking with the additional, more fictionalized lyric, “I can’t, can’t believe you want me/After all the heartbreaks, after all I’ve done.” Na, she don’t. So is it any wonder that The Weeknd has made those he’s had in his bed “Scared to Live,” mainly because of his knack for mind games and erratic behavior. The kind that would make someone as devoted as Hadid skittish about taking on a new relationship and potentially opening her heart again. Though, of course, maybe The Weeknd is taking too much narcissistic credit for “ruining” a girl as he sings, “You always miss the chance to fall for someone else/’Cause your heart only knows me/They try to win your love, but there was nothing left.” His skill at self-contradiction also runs rampant throughout the track, at one point interpolating the chorus of Elton John’s “Your Song” (“I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind”) with, “I hope you know that, I hope you know that/I’ve been praying that you find yourself/I hope you know that, I hope you know that/We fell apart, right from the start.” But if that’s true then why bother salt-in-woundly remarking, “I should have made you my only/When it’s said and done”?
Tracing some of the roots of his inherently fraught (read: fucked up) mental state to his youth on “Snowchild” (a cocaine allusion, to be sure), The Weeknd discusses his thirst for fame from an early age, remembering, “I used to pray when I was sixteen/If I didn’t make it, then I’d probably make my wrist bleed.” And make it he did, after taking a Madonna-esque risk by dropping out of school (granted, The Weeknd checked out of high school whereas M dipped from college after one semester). “Cali was the mission,” as he repeats again in this song, after using the same line elsewhere in his oeuvre with far less of a sardonic tone. But now, no longer, for he blames the abstraction that is L.A. as part of the reason for his own schizophrenic personality, trapped somewhere between demon and angel–but of course leaning more toward the former. Which is why Cali is no longer the mission (“now a nigga leavin’”), but the place from which to run screaming (he can’t run for the Hills in this case as he already lives in them). Getting back to the album’s title, The Weeknd declares, “Leaving, leaving into the night/Now a nigga leaving, leaving/Leaving into the night.” This, too, contrasts against his jubilant determination to get to L.A. at any cost on 2011’s House of Balloons, with “The Morning” describing a departure for the city that would blow up his music career in the daylight. Now, after so many years, all he wants is to slink away into the night without a word.
This transitions perfectly into “Escape From LA,” yet another homage to John Carpenter (who first released the more appropriate Escape From New York before switching to the opposite coast with this 1996 film of the same name). Detailing the city as a world unto itself, The Weeknd discusses it’s iniquity in the form of, “This world is such a, such an evil place/Man, these hoes will always find a way/’Cause when I’m on the liquor, I go crazy/And for that pussy, you know I’m a slave, yeah.” Because, of course, The Weeknd wouldn’t be The Weeknd without getting raunchy at some point apropos of nothing in between talking shit about L.A., with the chorus being, “Well this place is never what it seems/Take me out L.A./Take me out of L.A./This place will be the end of me.” Eh, as if The Weeknd ain’t gonna find drugs and pussy distraction back in Toronto as well (quarantined or not). And, like Clay in Less Than Zero (a book that “Escape From LA” seems to be a sonic version of), some part of him will always be pulled back. Especially when the sex scenes he once saw as hollow suddenly seem alluring again after departing. Case in point, “She pulled up to the studio/She closed the door and then she locked it/For me, for me/We had sex in the studio/Nobody walked in/I cut my verse and then she popped it.” While the sex might be addictive, The Weeknd claims to find something lacking in the appearance and personality of this woman, a representative amalgam of every L.A. dame, describing, “L.A. girls all look the same/I can’t recognize/The same work done on they face/I don’t criticize/She a cold-hearted bitch with no shame/But her throat too fire.” Damn boi, talk about being cold-hearted. Enhancing the hyper-meta, hyper-surreal nature of L.A. living, The Weeknd invokes the film industry pall cast over everything with the lyric, “She’s all mine for the night/She’s all mine until he calls her line.” Of course, there won’t be much left of the film industry if and when corona is through.
The kind of “cold-hearted bitch” The Weeknd seems to be painting is also manifest in the line, “She never need a man/She what a man need” (from “Snowchild”), which comes back to roost on “Heartless.” This time with The Weeknd instead insisting, “Never need a bitch/I’m what a bitch need.” At the same time, The Weeknd’s flair for paradox shines through with the subsequent admission, “Tryna find the one who can fix me.” Though this is the only sign of a heart on the song. Whereas Kanye West discusses Amber Rose being heartless on his 2008 song of the same name, The Weeknd’s version sounds more like PartyNextDoor’s “Savage Anthem” as he unapologetically declares, “All this money and this pain got me heartless/Low life for life ’cause I’m heartless/Said I’m heartless/Tryna be a better man, but I’m heartless/Never be a weddin’ plan for the heartless/Low life for life ’cause I’m heartless.” Maybe there’s something in the water in Canada that turns men so heartless/savage (#PartyNextDoor).
Of course the “sweet” sentiment has to be interjected with PartyNextDoor grossness that includes, “I’ve been runnin’ through the pussy, need a dog pound/Hundred models gettin’ faded in the compound.” Ah, and speaking of faded, “Faith” is yet another song expounding on The Weeknd’s religious-like devotion to drugs. At the same time, the enigma is that every time he succumbs to the tantalization of them, he feels as though he’s losing his faith just a little bit more, leaving nothing left but a hollowed out husk in the place where his soul might have been. And no, this is nothing new for Michael Stipe of R.E.M., who famously sang “Losing My Religion.” But what religion is there to adhere to in a time as godless as this one? A question addressed on his lead single from the record, “Blinding Lights.” As one of the most 80s-tinged songs on After Hours, it’s only natural that the lyrical narrative should explore the delights and pratfalls of excess. Being blinded by the lights of the Strip designed to distract and mitigate from the pain of undiluted existence, The Weeknd, in his most unwittingly appropriate quarantine lyric, sings, “I look around and Sin City’s cold and empty/No one’s around to judge me/I can’t see clearly when you’re gone.” Again seeming to refer to his “great love,” Hadid, this premise bleeds into the next also Max Martin-produced song, “In Your Eyes.”
This, too, exudes further 80s cachet on The Weeknd’s part (for we all know the OG title belongs to Peter Gabriel and, to boot, John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler). In that Michael Jackson lilt that was also overt on 2016’s “I Feel It Coming,” The Weeknd expresses an attraction to a girl who plays it just as cool as he tries to, stoic amid her pain. So it is that The Weeknd describes, “In your eyes/I see there’s something burning inside you/Oh, inside you/In your eyes, I know it hurts to smile but you try to.” Not that it would matter if she didn’t, for The Weeknd admits to his own deliberately oblivious behavior with the line, “I always look the other way, I’m blind.” Apparently by the lights. So it is that he seems to sadistically get off on this woman’s pain despite also feeling guilty about it. That’s The Weeknd’s whole thing. Which doesn’t really work in a quarantine setting when you have to stick to one person without emotionally abusing to the point of driving them back out into the world to get infected. Replete with a saxophone solo at the end, “In Your Eyes” could easily hold its own in the 1980s without anyone being the wiser.
The power ballad-exuding “Save Your Tears” channels The Outfield’s 1985 song, “Your Love,” as The Weeknd urges the one he’s hurt to save her tears for another day. But why would she when she’s already shed all the salty droplets she can from her waterproof mascara’d eyes? Accordingly, she ignores The Weeknd when she sees him in the public space (as if that would ever happen now), with our “jilted” one recounting, “I saw you dancing in a crowded room/You look so happy when I’m not with you/But then you saw me, caught you by surprise/A single teardrop falling from your eye.” And yet, The Weeknd still can’t seem to leave well enough alone, always trying to get back into her good graces after fucking her over yet again. This much is evident on “Repeat After Me (Interlude)”–which is hardly an interlude at three minutes, fifteen seconds. Filled with the psychedelic influence of Kevin Parker, who found time to co-produce in between releasing his own long-awaited album, The Slow Rush, earlier this year, The Weeknd seems to want to put a hypnotic spell on his since moved on love with the chant, “You don’t love him, you don’t love him/You don’t love him if you’re thinking of me/You don’t love him, you’re just fucking/You’re just fucking, it means nothing to me/You don’t love him, you don’t love him.” But she don’t love you either anymore, darlin’–the only thing The Weeknd hasn’t seemed to reconcile yet on the album.
A low-key club banger, “After Hours” is, you guessed it, another acknowledgement of wrong-doing in conjunction with begging for forgiveness with the chorus, “Oh, baby/Where are you now when I need you most?/I’d give it all just to hold you close/Sorry that I broke your heart, your heart.” Big fucking deal. How many times can a person say sorry and still repeat the same behavior afterward? Just because a pandemic is afoot doesn’t mean fuckboys should think they have the right to capitalize on a girl’s presumed vulnerability. Mirroring the comedown of a serene drug trip (maybe acid, maybe heroin), “Until I Bleed Out” is a fitting concluding testament to The Weeknd’s reconciliation with the notion that despite wanting to stop–wanting to be better–he knows his emotional desires will forever be at war with his physical ones. And, having just turned thirty this year, it doesn’t seem as though the expected advent of “maturity” is going to stop him from his constant flirtation with both women and drugs. He’d rather surrender his entire body to both until he bleeds out. It’s a similar sentiment to those humans still declaring they’d rather leave their house and experience “real” life than maintain the quarantine until told otherwise. Alas, there is nothing out there anymore that The Weeknd speaks of on After Hours, a record more at home in the era it takes so much inspiration from–the 80s–than the now.
