The Weeknd talks 'cathartic' music in wide-ranging 'Esquire' interview

The Weeknd, aka Canadian artist Abel Tesfaye (and one of the most philanthropic celebrities of 2020), apparently gets through his breakups like the rest of us: with music. Or at least that’s the sense that he left Esquire writer Allison P. Davis with after he started (reluctantly) opening up about his album My Dear Melancholy. As fans will remember, the 2018 release came right after the artist’s high-profile relationships with Bella Hadid and Selena Gomez but Tesfaye doesn't name them and becomes "comically taciturn" when asked directly about the album's muse(s), maintaining his notorious privacy.In the new mega-profile, Tesfaye indeed opens up a fair amount, about everything from getting used to lockdown life, to why he sold his $20 million Hidden Hills mansion ("All that house, it was never really me.") and the five songs of his that define him. One thing he didn’t really want to talk about though was who My Dear Melancholy was about. But he did say that making the 22-minute album (which took him two and a half weeks to write, record, and release), was a cathartic experience.

 

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“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,” Tesfaye tells Davis, who then asked whether the album helped lift his spirits. “Yeah, of course. I mean, that would have sucked if I didn’t.”When My Dear Melancholy dropped, fans speculated hard about which lyrics were about which ex. Hadid and Tesfaye’s coupledom lasted longer than his and Gomez's short-lived courtship, and following Bella and Abel's first relationship in 2015-16, the pair rekindled things in the summer of 2018. They then moved in together that fall in New York, and all signs seemed to point to a potential engagement. They ultimately called it quits again last August, saying that physical and mental distance took too big of a toll on their relationship.

 

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“I wasn’t too confident with how I looked,” @theWeeknd says of his early aversion to the spotlight. “I didn’t think that I could sell the music looking like me.” He didn’t put his unobscured face on his album covers and wouldn’t talk to reporters. “I was very hardheaded. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever done a radio interview. I just feel like I would give a horrible interview.” Our September cover story, starring the Weeknd, is available at the link in our bio. Story: Allison P. Davis (@babymeatballs) Photo: @johnsonjerald Jacket: @prada T-shirt: @johnelliottco Necklace: @chromeheartsofficial Hat and earrings: His own

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In the interview, Tesfaye refuses to talk about any of it, including why he scrapped a whole upbeat album that he was planning at the time in order to produce Melancholy instead. “It’s not my first time. I’ve scraped so many records!” he seemed to shrug. And when he was directly asked who the album was about, he gave a sturdy “No comment.”Meanwhile, the Canadian did admit that he often separates his Weeknd persona from his actual personality, since he comes off as extremely shy IRL, a far cry from the confident, sexually potent character from whose perspective he typically sings. When Davis asked how he reconciles some of his misogynistic lyrics, he said it’s the performer in him.“It’s definitely a character. When you hear some of the drastic stuff, you can tell,” he said, also revealing that he’d love to write an album for a female artist one day.“I mean, that’s why it’s tricky, because it is me singing the words; it is my writing. It’s like you want people to feel a certain way. You want them to feel angry. You want them to feel sad. You want them to feel. It’s never, like, my intent to offend anybody.”And he's been creatively thriving in quarantine. Following up on the March release of After Hours, Tesfaye has been actively working all summer and fans can look forward to a new single with Calvin Harris called “Over Now,” on August 28.