Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The canonical example of a musical alter ego being killed off is David Bowie\u2019s dispatch of his Ziggy Stardust character at a London concert in 1973. Included in the setlist that night was a cover of Jacques Brel\u2019s \u201cMy Death\u201d. Bowie had altered its lyrics, adding a new opening line. \u201cMy death waits like an old rou\u00e9,\u201d he sang, in the soon-to-be-sacrificed guise of Ziggy.Hurry Up Tomorrow is a similar act of leave-taking. It is touted as the last album that Abel Tesfaye will make as The Weeknd. Bowie is a reference point. The Canadian is an admirer: he titled The Weeknd\u2019s 2016 album Starboy in tribute to Ziggy Stardust\u2019s anthem, \u201cStarman\u201d. But death does not wait like an old rou\u00e9 on this occasion. Instead it waits for the rou\u00e9 himself.While Ziggy was a fantasy of pop stars as alien beings, The Weeknd is a portrait of the pop star as a jaded rake, impelled by desires for sex and stimulants that can never be satisfied. Tesfaye sings the part in a sweet high voice, a pure register for impure appetites. He launched his alter ego with 2011\u2019s House of Balloons. The music was dark and moody, an anti-hero\u2019s take on the seductive moves of the traditional R&B loverman. \u201cLife\u2019s such a movie, filmed independent,\u201d Tesfaye sang, depicting his project as arthouse fare. But it has become a blockbuster franchise.The commercial figures for The Weeknd\u2019s music are among the mightiest of our times. Twenty-seven songs have been streamed over 1bn times on Spotify, the most by any artist. \u201cBlinding Lights\u201d, from 2019, is the best performing hit in the history of the Billboard singles chart. Proof that pop music has not dumbed down, it is immeasurably more sophisticated than the runner-up, Chubby Checker\u2019s \u201cThe Twist\u201d. Tesfaye has managed to attain peak popularity without cheapening his work. His only stumble came when he played a version of his Weeknd character in the TV series The Idol, where he was also co-creator. A lurid tale of sexual manipulation in the music industry, it was cancelled in 2023 after one season. Like a gimcrack version of the 1980s influences in his music, it resembled a straight-to-video erotic thriller.Despite the show\u2019s flop, Tesfaye\u2019s screen ambitions are unbowed. A movie based on Hurry Up Tomorrow is due in May, with Barry Keoghan and Jenna Ortega starring alongside the singer. The album itself lasts almost 90 minutes, a cinematic duration. With each track flowing into the next, it portrays The Weeknd as a middle-aged pop star cracking up amid a surfeit of pills, whiskey, self-loathing and applause. Love is what he really craves. Scratch a hedonist and you will find a romantic.The 22 tracks begin with an electronic heartbeat and a grand wash of Vangelis-like synthesisers. \u201cAll I have is my legacy,\u201d Tesfaye sings in an echoing high voice, as if in a temple. The song, \u201cWake Me Up\u201d, abruptly switches tempo to slickly stylised pop-funk redolent of a different kind of temple, an upscale nightclub. It is a collaboration with French dance duo Justice, the first in an impressive cast of guests.A titan of Italian disco, Giorgio Moroder, features on \u201cBig Sleep\u201d, a lush electronic ballad about death\u2019s allure. Big-hitters from US rap also appear, including a woozy turn from Travis Scott on \u201cReflections Laughing\u201d, a psychedelic account of a mind unravelling in the \u201cgilded cage\u201d of celebrity. \u201cThe Abyss\u201d beckons, where we find Lana Del Rey performing a self-consciously decorative cameo.Surrounded by famous companions, The Weeknd sings of fame\u2019s discontents. \u201cCry for Me\u201d has him suffocating in a \u201cpenthouse prison\u201d amid clashing chords and a heavy beat. He rallies in \u201cS\u00e3o Paulo\u201d, full-tilt Brazilian funk with the singer Anitta about a reckless tryst. But the blue funk resurfaces in \u201cBaptized in Fear\u201d when he sings about passing out in a bath and nearly drowning. \u201cI\u2019ll go overdose, I don\u2019t want to make it past 34,\u201d he laments mellifluously in \u201cEnjoy the Show\u201d.This month Tesfaye turns 35. Several references are made to his 2022 stadium gig in Los Angeles, which was cut short after he lost his voice. That alarming moment of fallibility, ascribed to stress, led to \u201ca kind of a mental breakdown,\u201d he told Variety magazine, \u201cwhich is pretty much what this new album\u2019s about.\u201dCreator and character thus blur together. The concept works: it explains why Tesfaye is considering performing under his own name in future. However, it also robs Hurry Up Tomorrow of definition. Interest dwindles during a sequence of handsomely designed but inert songs in the second half.The finale, also the title track, sends The Weeknd on his way with a sumptuous ballad, a sign of the quality running through the record. But the revelation that the rakish alter ego has been \u201ctrying to fill that void that my father left so no one else abandons me\u201d is underwhelming. Faced by pat imagery of healing sunshine and Christian forgiveness, we are left to rue the disappearance of the old rou\u00e9, the one animating The Weeknd\u2019s previous outings.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u2018Hurry Up Tomorrow\u2019 is released by XO\/Republic Records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The canonical example of a musical alter ego being killed off is David Bowie\u2019s dispatch of his Ziggy Stardust character at a London concert in 1973.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-193195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193197,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193195\/revisions\/193197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}