By: NATHANIEL ROBINSON
Any fans of The Weeknd have had a great two weeks. The R&B icon has been on a roll recently, having just finished his first part of touring. Abel’s racked up around $97 million from his tour, with 13 out of his 19 shows being entirely sold out. It’s no surprise that after the incredible success of his touring, Weeknd has announced an extension of it that starts in June of this year. On top of touring, we also got a remix of one of his most popular songs, Die For You, with none other than Ariana Grande. The two have worked on multiple songs together, always sounding great. Die For You is probably one of the weaker collab tracks considering it’s a song we’ve all heard so much already, but it’s still a good listen. That isn’t it though. Last night, The Weeknd released an album of all of his Live Performance music from one of his shows in Los Angelos. The remixed tracks that Abel sings over in these songs are both amazing and refreshing to listen to as a Weeknd Fan who’s played all of the original songs maybe a little too much. It’s exciting to see so much “new” music from Abel, and I can’t wait for the third installment of his “trilogy” of albums.
On top of the music, The Weeknd also finds himself in the lead role of an upcoming TV show directed by Sam Levinson (director of Euphoria starring Zendaya). There are some issues with this show The Idol, however. Mostly with how the original writer of the show, Amy Seimetz, suddenly left with no confirmed explanation still. This meant a whole creative rethink for the show, which was delayed it until this year. On top of that, Sam Levinson doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to writing and directing. While the first season of Euphoria was widely accepted as an exceptional show, the second season started to fall into a pit. The writing mostly focused on pointless nudity and decisions made by characters that made absolutely no sense. All this to say that everyone’s a bit skeptical about this new show, but we’ll all have to wait and see when it comes out (supposedly) this year. The Weeknd seems to have his hands full, and his fans are excited to see what he has in store next.