SPOTIFY
APPLE MUSIC
DEEZER

For an artist like The Weeknd, putting together a greatest hits compilation must be especially difficult; each era and microevolution of his career feels deserving unto itself. His second such collection, The Highlights, manages the task with ease, pulling together all of his, well, highlights, stretching all the way to the beginning to include two cuts from his 2011 debut House of Balloons. (The Highlights' release only misses the 10-year anniversary mark by a month.)

In a clever touch, the compilation doesn't unfold sequentially. Instead, it gets moodier and darker as it goes on. The bright keys and danceable Max Martin-produced '80s pop that have defined the latter half of his career open the proceedings like the climb of an intensely euphoric high. Songs like “Save Your Tears” (from 2020's After Hours), “Can't Feel My Face” (from 2015's Beauty Behind the Madness), and “Starboy” (from 2016's Starboy) sound like neon club lights and the sins committed beneath them. Then it pivots, slowly but steadily, to the comedown, where the singer's self-loathing finds a natural match in hazier, muddier productions. By the time the run of songs that includes “Call Out My Name” (from 2018's My Dear Melancholy,), “Die for You” (Starboy), and “Earned It” (Beauty) arrives, it's all id and nothing to cut it. And where else to go from there but to the original blueprint of his wounded, bleeding heart—“Wicked Games” and “The Morning” (both from House of Balloons)—where the lines between pleasure and pain blur into oblivion.

The Morning

Wicked Games and The Morning are the only songs from before BBTM

yall copping ?

Hell no

Just did

can't lie really thinkin about it

There were really no hits off Kiss Land, and The Morning and Wicked Games are obvious choices for hits off Trilogy

Go for it bro I just don't use CDs anymore since 2016. Don't got AH or MDM

They’re the only songs that were even remotely hits pre-BBTM

It’s a Greatest Hits not Greatest Songs

The Morning bigger than High For This?

Yes, no question

The Morning got an Uncut Gems placement

damn things must've changed

is it just on his store

yeah im checking the streaming bars rn and the morning is currently the highest on trilogy

thats a hard ass greatest hits tracklist

and he still isn't finished

as far as I know, yes.

Also, The Weeknd said that Taylor Swift told him The Morning was one of her favorite songs ever, so I’m sure it got a lot more exposure from her fanbase off that alone

i might cop

Facts I was just thinking this

no kiss land tracks suck tho

ehhhhhhh

they really forcing save your tears to be a hit by putting it as the first track on the album. i just wish the tracks were in chronological order, that way you could experience the progression of Abel's music