The Weeknd 'After Hours' The Character

 The Weeknd 'After Hours' The Character

     On March 20, 2020, After Hours by The Weeknd dropped. It was his fourth studio album and his most ambitious project to date. A stylistic and conceptual contrast to his more electro-pop r&b sound of Starboy but retaining the synthesizer driven new wave aspects from it and taking it a step further into more darker synthwave territory. Owing it's respective cinematic genre inspired references from Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Casino, Joker, & Uncut Gems (which Abel had a small role in as The Weeknd himself), it was, indeed, a dark odyssey from a gifted musical prodigy.

After Hours The Album is completely inspired, if not a bit untimely. It dropped over a year ago (Blinding Lights & Heartless dropped in late 2019), but was overlooked by yours truly during the pandemic (which found me seeking more light-hearted and heart-warming K-Pop girl group sounds like TWICE). I've always dug Abel's contrast of dark songwriting (highly sexualized yet morbidly romantic and drugged out) and high note vocals accompanied by a hard-hitting trap beat (those heavy lows on the 808 bass on The Hills always gives me chills). And it seemed as though he was done with Trap beats, trading it in for Johnny Jewel type Italo Disco synth heavy productions.

But the true kicker here is the cinematic voyage The Weeknd puts us through in this album's set of videos and live performances. I guess he had no choice but to go "high concept" with this one, given that he had more time to devote with world tours being cancelled for every artist in the world. Music videos for artists are usually an excuse to haphazardly add visual themes and design to an individual single. But, here, across all of the album's singles (sans maybe Snowchild and some of the remixes), there is a connective narrative through them all. Starting with the Fear & Loathing drenched Heartless all the way up until the album's final single, Save Your Tears. The narrative even continues in some of the live performances, such as the Jimmy Kimmel Blinding Lights performance which leads directly into the After Hours short film.

I've compiled all of the After Hours music videos and performances in chronological order below. Also the first video embedded below is my edit with quotes from Abel in a Variety interview that plays as a short recapped explanation of his themes and motivations.

 So please enjoy!