Cards on the table, when it comes to The Weeknd, I was never much of an avid listener. My head would bob and vibe out to his hit songs when they’d come on the radio, at a bar, or someone’s playlist, but I was never one to dive into his catalogue of music. After a friend’s suggestion, I listened to the new album, Hurry Up Tomorrow. The experience was similar to the scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home where Doctor Strange knocks Spider-Man’s soul out of his body. If that’s too deep of a cut into the Marvel Cinematic Universe then perhaps the more commonly used saying “out of body experience” will suffice.
The Weeknd is an all-out worldwide pop star, named the most popular artist in the world for the Guinness World Records. Even without being a longtime fan, I’m well aware of his popularity. Besides that, the mythos surrounding The Weeknd, a character created by Abel Tesfaye, was something I was well aware of. It bears the marks of hedonism as the character is typically participating in overindulgence of the usual unbound passions such as wanton sexual activity, copious drug abuse, party nights sustained by insomnia, all alongside an addiction to fame.
But the man Abel has been on a different trajectory as of late, putting an end to The Weeknd persona with this newest album. He discussed this while working on the project:
I’m going through a cathartic path right now. It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close the Weeknd chapter … Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn. […] The album I’m working on now is probably my last hurrah as The Weeknd. This is something that I have to do.
The album is sonically phenomenal, with lyrics that are poignant and often dark. There is a confessional nature to the album and even an explicit plea for God’s mercy. There is an anguish and longing that matches the album cover displaying Abel, tight-faced, screaming and sweating like the godman in Gethsemane. But before one gets there, the opening words need be acknowledged:
All I have is my legacy
I been losing my memory
No afterlife, no other side
I’m all alone when it fades to black
Fades to black
Could there be a more depressing introduction for a collection of music? Possibly so, but I’m hard pressed to think of any. One could argue there is no better place to start when producing an album that some have said is about heaven and salvation (this album being the third in a Dante-esque trilogy, After Hours being hell and Dawn FM purgatory). There is no better place to find God’s mercy and grace than at the end of our ropes, in the blackness in which we find ourselves and The Weeknd admits wasting his life and losing its meaning:
Take me back to a time
The trophies that I had would still shine
Now I have nothing real left
I want my soul
and
Well, you used up your borrowed life
And you wasted your borrowed time
Big sleep, big sleep
Well, you barely put up a fight
Ready for the forever night
Big sleep, big sleep, oh
But near the end of the album is what could be the tax collector’s prayer in the temple, in song form. It’s a track entitled “Give Me Mercy” with a chorus that rings true for all who’ve had life come crashing down on them:
Hoping that it’s worth all the bleeding
When I’m defeated
Give me mercy like you do and forgive me like you do
Hope that you see me, when I’m depleted
Give me mercy like you do and forgive me like you doGhost of my sins passing by
Eyes without a face, with nothing to say
Placing judgement on my crimes
Give it all away just to feel your grace
While The Weeknd is a cultural phenom and one of the biggest pop stars of our day, the feelings of defeat and depletion are undoubtedly human. They are inextricably connected to the human condition, showing no partiality when it comes to poor or rich, average or famous, partier or straightedge. While a great mystery to us, depleted and defeated seems to be the position God deems best to perform his work. These indeed are the ones for which his mercy is for.
So common is it to reference the all too familiar passage of Jesus’ word to those beaten down and defeated by the world and its ways:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Mt 11:28-29)
Yeah, yeah. We claim to know this rest but typically see it as a nice sentiment and find ourselves still chasing after passions, or at least exhausted by them. But perhaps Jesus means it. For those of us depleted and defeated, we’re banking on it. For those of us who feel inclined to indulge our wayward passions more than we should, whatever they may be, the mystery of God is that He is somehow in the midst of our messiness. Using our self-made disasters and misdirection for his own very sake. What bizarre workings from above, a mysterious implementation of grace.
The seventh century theologian, Maximus the Confessor, saw God’s work in the universe as a cosmic mystery, at work even in our amenable passions and drawing us to himself. He didn’t define passion as a strong drawing or enjoyment of perhaps an activity as we might describe it. He saw passion as “the impulse of the soul contrary to nature.” Nature being how we were designed to live, our passions directing us away from such designation. But Maximus also saw God’s mysterious orchestration even in the midst of our zig-zagged lifestyles.
For the all-wise Provider of our life allows what we do by our own impulses to be used, quite naturally and frequently, for our correction. In the case of us who frantically deal with our impulsive acts amid the confusion and the disorder of which those acts are both an object and a cause, our Provider guides the irrational love which, in the meantime, we have directed toward present diversions, back to that which is beloved by nature. (On the Cosmic Mystery of Christ)
Though the character of The Weeknd has profited Abel in countless ways, in his own words, in exchange he’s lost his soul. This is where the chasing of passions has left him. It’s where it leaves all of us. And according to Jesus and Saint Maximus, possibly where God would like to meet us. I do not mean to signify that the Christian world has “gained a celebrity” as we are so oft to celebrate, but I think what Abel is showing us is the hope and longing we all have in our brokenness and misguided passions. We hope for more, we hope for change. We long for salvation. We long for tomorrow. The new day, the rising sun.
To add to the mystery, tomorrow is somehow here already. Victory for the defeated is here today. The depleted can be renewed now. And yet, fulfillment awaits us tomorrow as well. This eschatological longing flows through Hurry Up Tomorrow. A wanting and waiting for a promised hope to come. Psalmic expectation intertwines throughout the lyrics. A Revelation-like vision of a possible future restoration of the soul. And like the anguished, sweaty-faced Abel on the cover of the album, suffering ourselves and our foolhardy passions, we cling to the tomorrow already here and simultaneously cry out with the saints and pop star, hurry up tomorrow!
