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The Weeknd drops ‘Starboy’ video
and we now know that the old him is never coming back
The Weeknd’s new personality as a mashup between Michael Jackson and Bruce Wayne is only getting started. On Wednesday, the Toronto native dropped the first video for the title track of his new album Starboy that features Daft Punk. In it, it’s clear that the old him is definitely behind us.
For a song that’s already dripping with symbolism between the lyrics and the cover art, the video takes things to the next level. Director Grant Singer is definitely on one with his latest visual from the XO artist’s arsenal. He also brought you The Hills, I Can’t Feel My Face and Tell Your Friends. But back to the show.
It starts off with a dramatic murder of what is ostensibly the old Abęl Makkonen Tesfaye, dreads and all on one side of the table. On the other, a masked man who eventually binds and suffocates the dreadlocked character. The struggle is real, then off comes the mask. We then see the new sleeker, definitively more active Weeknd, who proceeds to violently destroy the physical awards in the dead man’s house with a shining neon cross. There appears to be nothing particularly allegorical about it. The Weeknd’s old self, and what we did to him as a star in this business, created the new him.
The new him doesn’t give a damn. That’s why he’s driving a superhero-level sports car I’ll never be able to afford that apparently turns kittens into full-blown black panthers. The games are over.
Of all the apparently deeply personal lyrics on this song, the most poignant seems to be “look what you’ve done,” in the chorus. Maybe when he first emerged in 2011 as the eerie crooner whose tales of sex, drugs and deceit, he never thought it could change him. Maybe after he found himself catching flak for dating a young supermodel, then the center of a Super Bowl ad campaign, it became too much.
It seems if you’re a Canadian artist these days, there’s only so many darling compliments you can take before you go full bad boy. But compared to Justin Bieber and Drake, what The Weeknd is doing it for the culture better than the rest. I guess he really does come alive in the falltime.