The Weeknd’s epic Hurry Up Tomorrow is one of the most depressing albums in pop history
They say every generation gets the pop star they deserve… if so, this generation must be a miserable lot. The Weeknd’s latest (and, according to the artist himself, final) blockbuster album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, sounds like the longest and most self-absorbed suicide note in pop history: an 84-minute-long, 22-track concept album about drowning in a bath tub. From doomy opening Wake Me Up (“No after life, no other side / I’m all alone when it fades to black”) to the closing gospel-style title ballad (“I want heaven when I die / I want the pain no more”) Hurry Up Tomorrow is almost unremitting in both its bleakness and banality.
Framed with sonorous synths, ethereal samples, slow-moving blocks of electro bass and trappy drum machines, 34-year-old Abel Tesfaye offers up a very long, dark night of the soul with only brief glimpses of light. Song titles include Cry For Me, Give Up On Me, Give Me Mercy, Big Sleep, The Abyss and Red Terror. “It’s too late to save me” is a repeated lyrical motif which becomes explicit on the moody, shape-shifting Baptised in Fear when he experiences paralysis “in the tub,” and watches a dark shadow approaching whilst making prosaic observations about having his foot stuck “in the faucet” where “moving my toe was the only form of motion left.”
Although hints of redemption and escape flit through poppier songs (notably Niagara Falls, Take Me Back to LA and Drive), by the end we find our anti-hero still drowning, though now he is dreaming of being “back in the same tub where I learned to swim / With my mother trying to save every ounce of my innocence / I failed her like I failed myself, I’m sorry / Mama, I’m sorry.” Tesfaye’s solipsistic songcraft is undergirded by epic levels of self-loathing, disappointment, regret and lots of woe is me observations about how “fame is a disease”, whilst being almost entirely unleavened by wit, insight or empathy to anyone but his own miserable self.
They do say misery loves company, and you can’t argue with the numbers. The Weeknd is the biggest star of the streaming generation, with 27 songs that have scored over a billion streams on Spotify, and there’s probably a few more on here. The electro sound he conjures is lush and atmospheric, with synth hook lines criss-crossing in syncopated rhythmic patterns as grooves shift from mid-tempo plod to limber club belters. The Canadian singer-songwriter of Ethiopian descent has an effortless way with melody and one of those voices that (to quote Edith Piaf) “could sing the phone book and make it sound good.”
Which is just as well, because his lyrics amount to little more than banal reformulations of stunted adolescent misery. “I’m in my feelings,” he trills on Enjoy the Show, singing about overdosing after a concert whilst thinking about a girl who has broken his heart: “I just wanna die when I’m at my f---in’ peak … And when the curtain calls, I hope you mourn / And if you don’t, I hope you enjoy the f---in’ show.” The whole album is so bloated with inverted self-regard, it is not clear whether he wants listeners to call Emergency Services or call his agent.
Tesfaye has claimed that his sixth studio album will be his final release under the guise of the Weeknd, suggesting that he is in effect killing off a twisted RnB alter ego that has brought him nothing but fame, fortune and despair. It is also, apparently, the third in a trilogy, which started with the dazzling pity-party of 2020’s After Hours and continued with a sombre concept album about a journey to the afterlife, Dawn FM. Ultimately, I suspect it is too bloated and tonally narrow to hit the heights of After Hours or 2016’s lighter Starboy, but Hurry Up Tomorrow is certainly a bold way to drop the curtain on a phenomenal career, a luscious pop epic about how awful modern fame really is. Neil McCormick
Cymande, Renascence ★★★★★
At the dawn of the 1970’s, this group of Caribbean émigrés came together in Balham, South London, to create a unique fusion of jazz, soul and funk, shot through with roots reggae’s downtrodden spirituality. They struck gold in America, and Cymande (pronounced: sim-ann-day) toured Stateside with Al Green at his peak before holding down a residency at the Harlem Apollo, all thanks to their irresistibly silky sound and superlative playing.
At home, however, they were inexplicably ignored, causing disillusionment and a premature split after 1974’s third album Promised Heights. In the intervening five decades, key tracks like Bra and Dove were sampled by DeLaSoul, The Fugees and countless others, finally prompting a 2020’s reunion around prime movers Patrick Patterson (guitar) and, on bass, Steve Scipio – the triumphant return of a sleeping British superpower.
Now well into their seventies, these two have done an exceptional job here, not just extending Cymande’s modest legacy, but throwing everything at expanding its remit, with lavish 20-piece string arrangements and a couple of choice vocal collaborations topping off the familiar arsenal of guitars, keyboards, brass and hand percussion.
The opening Chasing An Empty Dream delivers six minutes of unhurried excellence, building from a minimal Scipio bassline à la The Temptations’ Papa Was A Rolling Stone, into crisp drumming and widescreen orchestration reminiscent of the great LA producer, David Axelrod. Lyrically, too, it’s purposeful, as honey-throated recruit Raymond Simpson urgently sings of a soullessly acquisitive contemporary culture where “everybody’s chasing fame, with no message for the young to hold onto.”
The quality scarcely dips across the ensuing nine tracks: the reconfigured Cymande command all the effortlessly swinging sophistication of a 1970s Meters record on the irrepressibly sunny Coltrane and How We Roll’s statement of intent, where Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B pops up for a sage voiceover. With even Only One Way’s cheesy piano balladry lit up by Gen-Z RnB belter Celeste, there’s a wonderfully empowering sense of elders handing down sublime idealism and wisdom for our entertainment and enlightenment. Behind dodgy titular spelling, Renascence is top-class. Andy Perry
Gary Kemp: This Destination ★★★★☆
Gary Kemp has carved out an unusual career on the other side of Spandau Ballet, who finally called it quits in 2019. Alongside acting on stage and TV, he hosts a music interview podcast series Rockonteurs and has a side gig playing surprisingly dextrous lead guitar with Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets – surprising because it is hard to imagine a dashing new romantic pop idol recast as a prog rock axeman.
If that all sounds a bit dilettantish, Kemp has also belatedly resumed making solo records. There was a 16-year gap between 1995’s Little Bruises and 2021’s Insolo, but latest offering This Destination has arrived more promptly, as if Kemp is determined to remind us – or perhaps himself – what he is really good at.
This Destination is a lush, ambitious piece of work: 11 finely detailed songs that marry thoughtfully observed lyrics of ordinary lives in crisis with luxurious melodies and cinematically vast arrangements intricately constructed with polished precision. It affirms Insolo’s tendencies towards a smooth 1970s influenced sound, evoking the dry jazz rock of Steely Dan in particular, with some of the machine tooled slickness of such AOR soft rock masters as the Eagles and Dire Straits, and a sprinkling of the even tempered soul of Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers.
If that is not unfashionable enough for you, I detect a fondness for the elaborations of Stephen Sondheim, with dramatic shifts in tempo and timbre, and lots of very clear, choral female backing vocals framing Kemp’s own measured and often quite theatrical lead vocals. There is a Broadway showtune sensibility about these long songs that seems far removed from the pushy pop swagger with which Kemp delivered 23 hit singles for Spandau in the 80s and 90s. It is hard to imagine such thoughtful yet stylistically overwrought songs being belted out by Spandau’s forceful frontman Tony Hadley.
Kemp seems determined to carve out his own space, on his own principles. Clearly the man behind such perennial favourites as True and Gold knows how to write a pop song. Here his purpose seems to be to stay true to the emotional inner lives of his characters, with an effect that is sometimes very stagy. Opening track Borrowed Town sets the scene with a long, thoughtful, atmospheric portrait of London, weaving Gerry Rafferty-style Baker Street saxes with glistening Mark Knopfler guitars as Kemp croons “this town doesn’t hurt … but you do.”
Take The Wheel is a highlight, addressing an existential crisis on a long car drive with the hushed formality of an Andrew Lloyd Webber showstopper. The anthemic Johnny’s Coming Home and snappy At the Chateau raise the tempo and revel in an abundance of lyrical wit and technical panache. It is a very accomplished piece of work, by a songwriter who has a clear command of his tools, even if it unabashedly evokes the kind of sincere, elaborate 70s soft rock singer-songwriter oeuvre Kemp and his New Romantic gang would have stomped all over in their youthful dancefloor prime.
Best New Songs
By Poppie Platt
Black Country, New Road, Besties
The Mercury-nominated indie-folk outfit have undergone a big change. Following lead vocalist Isaac Wood’s departure from the band in 2022, Georgia Ellery has now taken on the role of singer, lending a more twee, whimsical note to the band’s sound on this Camera Obscura-esque musing on forming substantial friendships.
Japanese Breakfast, Orlando in Love
A far cry from the infectious, poppy sound of Japanese Breakfast’s breakout single Be Sweet, Orlando in Love sees frontwoman/songwriter Michelle Zauner embrace the subdued and the melancholy, guided into a more grown-up sound by producer Blake Mills (Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple).
Jeff Goldblum (featuring Scarlett Johansson), The Best is Yet to Come
Yep, that Jeff – and that Scarlett. The A-list actors pair up for a stripped-back jazz faithful, the first single from Goldblum’s forthcoming fourth album, Still Blooming, which will also feature his Wicked co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.
Self Esteem, Focus is Power
Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s musical alter-ego has become one of the most distinctive voices in British pop: songs built on ballsy feminist messaging; her decades of experience in the music industry (earlier, as half of folk duo Slow Club) and knowledge of its ills lending her voice a pleasing wisdom; and her raucous live shows. This new single recruits a full backing choir for a stirring ballad about self-determination and belonging (”Now I see it clear with every passing of each year / I deserve to be here”).