The interview is phenomenal,read it in full,these are some inserts I found amusing!

LINK:
esquire.com/entertainment/music/a33611152/the-weeknd-abel-tesfaye-after-hours-interview-2020

About the tour

The show—the whole tour—was going to be bigger, grander, more ambitious than what he’s done before. He and his team had imagined a theatrical experience, like a three-act play or a rock opera telling the story of the character from the “Blinding Lights” video, a bloodied, beat-up man in a sharp red jacket, desperately trying to f***, drink, d*** (maybe murder?) his way out of heartbreak and into emotional maturity.

The Usher fiasco.

“I hit him up to apologize and tell him that it was misconstrued. He’s one of the reasons why I make music. Definitely. No, no, I have nothing bad to say about Usher. The sweetest, most down-to-earth guy ever.”

What has he been working on during lockdown

He’s been working, he says. Really. Writing and recording new music by himself and for other artists. He plays video games, but mostly for research. He’s a film nerd—he makes references to movies on every album—so naturally, he’s watching a lot of them. (He just saw the Korean thriller Burning after so many people recommended it to him.) He’s working on two screenplays, but his ambitions for them are modest. He wants to make small, independent films and maybe write roles for himself to play—maybe.

on writing for other artists

“I’m a writer. Sometimes I write a song and it’s not in my head. I’m writing it for someone else, but then I end up singing it. I want to write a whole album for a female artist. I have a whole vision of the Weeknd. But I guess it’s like . . . it’s the same reason why I want to write for someone else?”

My Dear Melancholy,

It took him about two and a half weeks to write, record, and release the whole thing from scratch.
“The reason why it was so short is like, I think I just had nothing else to say on this . . . whatever . . . . It was just like this cathartic piece of art. And yeah, it was short, because that’s all I had to say on this situation,” he says, widening his eyes.

On scrapped albums

I bring up the fact that he scrapped a whole “upbeat” album in favor of My Dear Melancholy. What made him do that?

“It’s not my first time. I’ve scrapped so many records!” he responds.

Tesfaye becomes comically taciturn around this kind of thing, never combative, sometimes contrite, mostly just demonstrating that he understands that this is a game, and he’s refusing to play, with commendable stubbornness. I choose to be direct and ask who, if anyone, this album was about. I receive the rarely enacted, truly disconcerting “No comment.” He says it sweetly, almost apologetically, but with the finality of a steel gate dropping over the window of a store.

Kiss Land

At the time, he told Complex the song was about touring, and about not quite knowing who he was as a person, and about an honest-to-God fear he was having (it was inspired by horror-movie makers like John Carpenter) regarding fame. “Wanderlust” has the feel of a transition song: We hear hints of the poppy, synth-heavy anthems to come, but it clings to that House of Balloons sound. It didn’t not work, but it didn’t quite work, either. He realized a few things after that: He wasn’t much of a performer and needed to tour more, and if he wanted to sell out twenty-thousand-seat arenas, he needed some help engineering a pop song.

Comparing him to MJ

It wasn’t a subtle transition to what the media dubbed his “Michael Jackson phase,” a comparison that didn’t sit well. “There was like a backhanded thing to the comment that didn’t feel genuine. It felt like they were setting me up for disaster,” Tesfaye says. “I wanted to transcend. I wanted the music to transcend.”

Man that tour info

holy

Weeknd x Travis x Asap otw?

you got a nice smile, are those teeth real?

Need 2021 ASAP

This man is so handsome

am i tripping or this is the era he's doing interviews the most?

brooo he so cute like wtfff

The pic in your avi

Yeah this is the most in dept hes been

I love him so much

Had to cop that avi

Nah he got fake teeth years ago lol

Man, this makes me more upset about no tour happening right now

Really enjoyed this interview

its an abel reference lol

"I want to write a whole album for a female artist"

great interview

Oh I read it wrong my bad just woke up lol

u good bro

nice avi btw

"He’s been working, he says. Really. Writing and recording new music by himself and for other artists."

"I bring up the fact that he scrapped a whole “upbeat” album in favor of My Dear Melancholy. What made him do that?"

“It’s not my first time. I’ve scrapped so many records!” he responds."

He calls the song “a period piece”: “I just wanted to make my Dark Knight Returns.” The comic-book reference (and the Easter-egg-filled video, a collaboration with the first Black-owned animation studio in Japan, D’ART Shtajio, featuring an animated Tesfaye) gives it the emotional distance of a superhero-­character origin story. It’s almost personal—almost.

my man knows his comic books

Thanks

"He’s working on two screenplays, but his ambitions for them are modest. He wants to make small, independent films and maybe write roles for himself to play—maybe"