The Weeknd House of Balloons Urban Flora Album Art
Charley Gallay / Getty Images
Abel Tesfaye wasn't always a familiar face. In March of 2011, when he released Firm of Balloons—5 years ago today—little was known about the entity and then merely known equally The Weeknd. Was it 1 person, or a group? Maybe the anthology, as many speculated, was a passion project from a more established artist? One-half a decade afterward, we have the answers to these questions. Beyond the album's initial mystique, it has—in the years since being introduced to the public—shifted the current pop landscape the way few debuts ever take.
Writer Sam Hockley-Smith joins FADER Canada editor Anupa Mistry and FADER senior author Rawiya Kameir for a give-and-take well-nigh the initial rollout behind House of Balloons, how the album provided a new framework for music, the backlog of youth culture, and why every Weeknd album since nonetheless must be measured confronting his drug-mazed debut.
Anupa Mistry: The level of fame that Abel Tesfaye is currently experiencing is still so insane to me, because the rollout and aftermath of House of Balloons was unprecedented in music and for Toronto. That period of time is very clear in my mind. Information technology was less than a year after Thank Me Later, and I call back feeling quite viscerally the disdain for Canadian hip-hop and R&B noticeably waning: outsiders started to become curious about what was going on up hither, locals were rallying around a new civic identity.
We all sit around on Saturday evenings for OVO Sound Radio these days, but Drake was always curating—recall his blog? That'southward how I first encountered The Weeknd. As the clamor effectually the mixtape escalated to a total-on roar and as Tesfaye became a conversation point between friends, I began to put the pieces together: he'd been recording at Dream House Studios on Bulwer with Doc McKinney (who was a key Esthero collaborator); my homegirl briefly worked with him at American Apparel and said he'd sometimes play his music—though no one knew information technology was him—and tracks had been floating effectually on YouTube. The performance for the University of Toronto'due south Black Students Association popped upwards on YouTube, but other than that he wasn't, like, doing open mics or that kind of thing. It was strange to have someone reach international acclamation without grinding it out like a lot of people had in the urban center for years.
Business firm of Balloons was up for a Polaris Music Prize in 2011. I was on the Prize's Chiliad Jury that year so I spent a lot of time listening to it, and the other nominees, including Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. They'd won a Grammy for that record: it was clearly a fan favorite and the kind of grandiose statement rock album that used to define (white) Canadian identity. It's essentially bellybutton gaze-y nostalgia—good and bad—for the banality of suburbs and information technology'due south a fine record but, as I listened to them both, I kept thinking virtually how Balloons was making a similar, parallel argument, about the city and the present. I'd walk around Kensington Market and Queen W and the U of T campus listening to it, arresting this story that'south actually imbued with and so much self-loathing and love-hate for the backlog of youth and the restless colorlessness that metropolis life can besides brood. The album was documenting a nascent scene that has gone on to shift the cultural image of Toronto, and it did so through a sound that has had a lasting effect on contemporary pop music.
Sam Hockley-Smith: Similar Anupa, I first encountered Business firm of Balloons through the October'southward Very Ain web log. Information technology was one of those weird things where information technology was never super clear who actually was looking at that web log. It always felt like a lifeline in an era of blogging that was more most discovering new artists than information technology was about coming up with any kind of concrete opinion almost these artists (the OVO web log was an obvious forerunner for Drake'due south long-running obsession with putting his postage on new artists earlier anyone else). Merely my opinion on The Weeknd arrived fully formed. This was music I'd been looking for: a lurid, unblinking expect at the loneliness of partying belatedly night without glamorizing it. Like Drake, Tesfaye is really practiced at making sadness a commodity. This is probably going to annoy someone, somewhere, but Kurt Cobain was likewise very good at this, only he didn't embrace his talent for making depression appealing. Being lonely and sleazy and sort of a dark dude was actually embraced by Tesfaye every bit not merely an occasional feeling, merely an actual way of life. Remember when he talked about dreading the feeling of happiness in the New York Times?
The anthology, for me, was all—100%, one thousand%!—about "Glass Table Girls," the second half of the 3rd track on the tape, and one that distilled every Weeknd cliche into 1 song: cocaine, all-night parties, and the unique feeling of complete and utter loneliness that comes with looking around at the globe yous've created for yourself after partying nonstop. In this world, sunrises are not beautiful, they're gross and they taste similar stale drugs and bad decisions. It is shut to perfect in that it does all the things people detest Tesfaye for doing. Listening to information technology volition make you feel gross. A song that tin can evoke a feeling so palpable deserves attending.
Whatsoever act of myth-making involves pulling from pre-existing sources, dialing in on a zeitgeist then expanding it into an entire universe. House of Balloons was then successful at doing that, that everything else Tesfaye did until "Tin can't Feel My Face up" was measured against that earlier work. He'd probably view that equally a burden, simply I await at information technology as the ultimate artistic argument—accident or not.
Rawiya Kameir: One of the biggest questions when House of Balloons dropped was: what R&B singer's anonymous projection is this? It was inconceivable that an unknown creative person would launch their career this way and it sounded similar information technology could've been multiple guys, and so theories abounded and interest peaked—sort of similar what'due south happening these days with dvsn, some other OVO-affiliated project with an unnamed vocalist. In addition to the style of the songs themselves, it felt like House of Balloons presented a new framework for music discovery, a new way for artists to engage with the media cycle.
To some extent, especially to people adjacent to Toronto's music manufacture, Balloons was understood to be Doc's personal project; guys around the urban center had claimed to have worked with him on similar-sounding R&B projects around the same time. That idea was eventually nullified, only for all of the personality and behavior that'south ascribed to The Weeknd—the drugs, the and so-chosen "rape-y" lyrics, the antisocial tendencies—it wasn't until much more recently that he was acknowledged having whatever real auteurial intent. It's wild to recollect that it's already been v has since HoB's release. It'southward even wilder to consider the trajectory of his career in that fourth dimension span. The Weeknd was ushered into the popular music landscape under the bullshit guise of "alt-R&B" and I often wonder what office that played in shaping his identity in the public'southward imagination. Anupa, what do y'all call up about that era regarding how R&B was talked about? How did—or how does—The Weeknd intersect with that?
Anupa: I am pretty obsessed with dvsn correct now, and I know that a lot of it has to exercise with his (their?) songs existence the kind of clean, tranquillity storm vibe that'south directly counter to the seismically-candy sound the Weeknd popularized. I don't mean that as a dis at all, because even Abel is off that. What exercise I remember almost the time when the Weeknd popped? A lot of pseudo-derisive commentary from people who had no thought how weird R&B had been in the neo-soul era (and prior), and a lot of positioning of Abel—as well as Frank Body of water—every bit the saviors of modern soul. I don't want to downplay the super intoxicating alchemy of sounds and Tesfaye's obvious vocal talent—"Loft Music" does this perfectly for me; the song's first half feels like collapsing slow motion into a massive, plush hotel bed.
Just if we're going to talk well-nigh why HoB prompted a shift in the fashion R&B was talked about I'd similar to put the onus back on the critics and the consumers: what was it in those themes—that Sam has gear up actually well—that made the Weeknd so palatable to fans simply also people whose critical take was that information technology'due south "alt?" I know Kurt was on the right side of personal politics but I really actually like that parallel, at to the lowest degree with regard to HoB, because both artists hit on a item wounded, kind of perverse, strain of male ennui.
Sam's right: fans have such a tight grip on the sound and intent of HoB that everything that's come afterwards has been received every bit lesser than. The snark surrounding Dazzler Backside The Madness, which is actually quite good, is that it's a "pop" record and energetically out of alignment with the Weeknd'due south "brand." HoB is a colonnade tape, just the cocky-destructive lifestyle that birthed it is unsustainable. Ultimately, Abel is not Kurt. I don't want that for him, and I don't think he wants it for himself. Sam, Rawiya: what is House of Balloons legacy? Does information technology get the recognition information technology deserves for keeping our inboxes filled with mixtapes by whiny, motorcar-tuned R&B dudes? And, ooh, what did y'all think it got wrong?
Sam: It's telling that to become really and truly successful—in the 2016 pop music sense of the give-and-take—Tesfaye had to largely carelessness the existential malaise that made people care nigh him in the first place, or at least cloak it in less bleak instrumentals. Fifty-fifty so, Balloons' legacy is massive. It looms large over everything nosotros've heard. It made happy songs passe. It made the very concept of contentment seem lame. It spawned a vast legion of imitators, all tracing vocal lyrics in mounds of cocaine on mirrors at half-dozen a.thou. It was a fashionable version of depression, done very well. That sounds disparaging, only I don't want information technology to be. House of Balloons got everything correct, which is why it caused such a seismic shift in music.
Then it'due south not actually well-nigh what Balloons got wrong, it'southward just that everyone, Tesfaye included, spent so much time trying to replicate the unsustainable emotional state that tape fostered that they forgot that for sadness, loneliness, anger—whatever—to be palatable, it needs to be played off of another feelings. Does perpetual nihilism offer a hazard for redemption? Tin can you even come across redemption when you're and so deep in it? The unfortunate fact of House of Balloons is that its imitators mistook sadness for depth.
What I still tin can't effigy out about the album, though, is how to avert this sort of destructive imitation. What exercise you lot do when the art you make arrives and then fully formed that information technology becomes a design for copycats? That'due south not Tesfaye's mistake. It'southward maybe a petty bit our fault for committing so instantly to the world he presented. I await at all these people that took the barest skeleton of a sound and ran amok with it, and I wonder: do they know that they're imitating? Or does information technology all feel new? Were so many artists then out of affect with their feelings that it took The Weeknd to allow them to feel okay well-nigh looking at their darker sides? Peradventure they're non doing that. Maybe they recognize the concept of that state, minus the bodily feelings associated with it, similar advanced robots.
Where does this sound go? Can it go anywhere now? Or is it just going to exist rammed fifty-fifty harder into the footing until we can't accept information technology anymore? Does this kind of faux lessen the impact or quality—bold y'all recollect it's good—of HoB?
Rawiya: Drugs aren't new to R&B or hip-hop—pills, coke, lean, weed, any, accept been a presence in blackness music for decades. Merely, for complex socio-cultural reasons that are worthy of a discussion of their own, the post-rap narrative has e'er positioned the blackness man as distributor, not consumer, of hard drugs. I've always thought one of the things that made people cling to the Weeknd—especially critics and publications that were but so outset to cover R&B, often in the reductive ways y'all've both referred to Sam—was that he firmly, publicly centered himself equally a drug user on Firm of Balloons.
I don't do drugs and neither practise a lot of my friends, so "Loft Music" and "Drinking glass Tabular array Girls" never sounded similar parties I wanted to be at. That'south probably why I wasn't a huge fan of the project when it came out. I liked a couple of songs, I liked that it was, in theory, trying to present an aesthetic as an idea. But it wasn't until Dazzler Behind the Madness terminal year that I finally became something of a fan—the Weeknd's all the same lamentable as hell, except the backdrop of his nihilism is arena tours, supermodel girlfriends, clingy friends.
Sometimes repeated imitation is what leads to evolution; he may have been the genesis of a specific sound, only he's not its best vocalist or songwriter. Afterwards watching the surprise OVO performances at FADER FORT in Austin this past weekend, I actually experience adept well-nigh where post-Weeknd R&B has ended upward: projects fronted past men, for men—and I apply that descriptor loosely—don't accept to be harsh and gloomy to pop off.
0 Response to "The Weeknd House of Balloons Urban Flora Album Art"
Post a Comment