The Weeknd & Justice – Wake Me Up

Now listen to “Wake Me Up” by The Weeknd and Justice in the plusfm playlist, taken from the latest album “Hurry Up Tomorrow.”

Label : XO – Republic Records
© 2025 The Weeknd XO Music ULC

The Weeknd, aka Abel Tesfaye, began his second trilogy in his career in 2020. Following After Hours and Dawn FM, here comes Hurry Up Tomorrow, the final installment of this project. While the album’s exceptional length is more reminiscent of a film than a record (1 hour and 24 minutes), it’s perhaps because Hurry Up Tomorrow is the soundtrack to a feature film of the same name, set for release in May 2025.

With its 20 songs, two spectacular interludes, and a plethora of prestigious guest appearances (Justice on Wake Me Up, Florence + The Machine and Travis Scott on Reflections Laughing, Playboy Carti on Timeless, etc.), the album resembles a blockbuster worthy of the superstar status the Canadian has acquired over the past 15 years. The repetitive (some would say tiresome) aspect of the album reflects the depression from which Abel Tesfaye suffers – and which he has never tried to hide.

He literally goes round in circles about his demons (alcohol, drugs) and the intense fatigue – including vocal – that fame causes in him. If a title like São Paulo is rather to be classified on the side of hedonism, most of the tracks exude the anguish of a gifted singer who suffers from having reached a certain artistic limit. Abel Tesfaye is finally the king of the retro reference – which in his case sometimes flirts with plagiarism. From Michael Jackson’s Thriller to a certain “Depeche Mode” color, the album is full of winks or samples that plunge us back to an era that seems to be the matrix framework of Tesfaye’s wounds.

Finally, let us mention the presence of the great Giorgio Moroder on the majestically baroque The Big Sleep: a piece that totally synthesizes the state of mind of the performer, both in his chameleon aspect, his taste for drama and his undeniable talent for sublimating melancholy.

©Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz