Poet T.S. Eliot famously wrote “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”
While many literary critics claim he was speaking on the state of a post-WWI Europe, few know that the Nobel Prize-winner was actually prophesying the Weeknd’s new – and final – album, Hurry Up Tomorrow.
The 22-song synth and R&B cut is like a hologram of the Weeknd. It looks like him. It sounds like him. It feels like him. But it doesn’t have any weight. It’s exactly what you’d expect for a farewell album, but it doesn’t have the instant-classic chart-toppers listeners have come to expect of the four-time Grammy winner.
The lead single “Timeless (feat. Playboi Carti)” is emblematic of the entire album. It’s undeniably the Weeknd, with lyrics about girls and cocaine playing over 80s synth and trap beats, but it’s not new. It’s like reading an AI summary of Beauty Behind the Madness or Starboy – all of the essentials are there, but you’d be much better going straight to the source.
Hurry Up Tomorrow opens with “Wake Me Up,” a five-minute tonesetter with lyrics about fearing the end of love and life. It starts out slow and moody but builds to a climax that sounds straight off After Hours. The sonic callback would be welcome, but for someone who wanted an iota of artistic progression over the past five years, it was frustrating.
“Cry For Me,” the next track, starts with industrial fuzz and a bit more energy. It’s the strongest song on the album, but it’s hard to sympathize with the Weeknd’s grievances with popstardom when he claims he was stuck in a “penthouse prison.” He’s not known for his humility, but bars like that come off way too strong.
The best parts of the next notable song, “São Paulo (feat. Anitta),” are when the Weeknd isn’t singing. Anitta’s Portuguese is vibrant and exciting, the two things lacking on the rest of this album. The track is over five minutes long, and the dance beat is contradicted by the Weeknd’s wailing. Still, the parts I don’t understand are so catchy that I’ll revisit this song more than any other on the album.
The album’s final feature is from Lana Del Rey on “The Abyss.” While they’ve collaborated before, I was really interested to see how their styles blended one last time. The resulting song was anything but interesting – just a disappointing mess.
It’s clear that “The Abyss” was meant to recapture the starpower of Ariana Grande’s feature on “Save Your Tears,” but while the Weeknd and Grande ooze chemistry, he and Del Rey sound like they’ve never met.
The album’s closer, “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” is a relatively strong conclusion. The Weeknd sings like he’s on his deathbed, an apt farewell to his 14-year-long run as one of the biggest names in music. It sounds like what would play during the end credits of his biopic, and it seems like a song that was made for himself, not the audience.
The Weeknd entered the 2020s as hot as any artist has ever been. “Blinding Lights” was in the middle of the greatest Billboard run of all time. He played the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show. After Hours was going triple platinum.
Unfortunately, he ran out of steam. Dawn FM was mediocre, “The Idol” was disastrous, and he currently seems like the least interesting thing on charts dominated by Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.
While Hurry Up Tomorrow isn’t particularly terrible, it represents a creative bankruptcy that serves as a death rattle for one of the most exciting artists of the last 20 years. The Weeknd has dropped a bloated, same-old disappointment that ends his career on a note lower than his tenor could ever hit.
4/10.