Do we need much of an introduction here? One of the biggest success stories in pop music in the 21st century has teased his “retirement” after his sixth studio album. Hurry Up Tomorrow is here at last—here’s everything you need to know about the latest and potentially last The Weeknd album.
Arena Pop Wins Out Again
The overriding feeling of Hurry Up Tomorrow is a party at or for the end of the world, surely an intentional one given the moniker dies with the project’s release. The maximalist production that the Canadian superstar cultivated with past projects like Dawn FM and After Hours remains in broad strokes, still held up by his own production chops and contributions by glitzy polymaths like Justice, Max Martin and Mike Dean. You don’t have to dive particularly deep into the tracklist to hit on this motif. The opener, “Wake Me Up,” begins with these grandiose gothic synth sections, almost vampiric as they queue up Abel’s introduction. What follows the sparse section at the start is a driving piece of electropop in the middle that stands toe-to-toe with any of his highest charters, a contrast that plays out plenty deeper in.
Jump further for “Open Hearts,” a song where The Weeknd again ties Hurry Up Tomorrow some of the anthemic, arena-filling pop music honed on a record like After Hours. Tweaking previous formulas isn’t even something that’s limited to reaching back into his archives, it’s something that plays out with music released in this cycle. The bacchanalia of “Sao Paolo” remains for the first half of the song, but its close radically changes for inclusion here, ceding space to Mike Dean for a mind-bending collision of synthesizers. Generally, it shows why the engineer-turned-producer works so well in this sort of environment, already stamping one of the best odes to excess with his work on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
Flawless Transitions And Well-Placed Features
That song ends up being instructive for a rather unexpected highlight of Hurry Up Tomorrow: the Weeknd and his mastery of song transitions and sequencing. Many of the tracks feature these bridges where the instrumentals from one develop and bleed into each other, but that also takes place on a more structural level. Between “Wake Me Up” and “Sao Paolo,” “Cry For Me” mashes the industrial SFX and trap drums of the latter against the shining ’80s production of the former, still managing to carve one of the LP’s stronger songs on top of serving that structural purpose.
Anitta’s contributions are almost to the level of a sample (that is, less a traditional verse structure than an overarching motif), but there are a surprising number of features that appear here. He manages to coax a bonafide pop performance out of Future, straying and straining outside of his typical vocal range with his contributions on “Enjoy The Show.” In this writer’s view, the Atlanta MC’s forays into R&B are typically challenging, but arriving in the palace of Hurry Up Tomorrow provides enough periphery around him to make his section fit like a glove. Now multi-time collaborators, what makes the pair work so well together narratively is on full display; when around the midpoint of the track the two swap lines about “sipping mud again,” the overlap between their core tenets of battling addiction and romantic entanglements truly comes into full view.
More Unexpected Partners For The Weeknd On Hurry Up Tomorrow
To that end, when Travis Scott enters the fray on “Reflections Laughing,” queued up by a pleading voicemail from one of The Weeknd’s partners, he ventures towards embodying the demons that the superstar battles throughout the record. Copping a warbling, pitched-down autotune performance, his usual boasts about lavish lifestyles and scenic nightlife have a distinct menace to them in this application.
Completing the trio of hip-hop features, Playboi Carti’s spot with “Timeless” still stands as one of the best pieces The Weeknd serves up with Hurry Up Tomorrow, perfectly tapping into the glamorous yet partially uncanny atmosphere. It’s expertly produced and executed on a lot of levels, also encapsulating the widening of The Weeknd Cinematic Universe™, adding titans like Pharrell and unexpected partners like the aforementioned Atlanta MC.
Stepping outside of that realm but staying on that point, bonafide electronic legend Giorgio Moroder steps up to the plate for “Big Sleep,” producing a soundtrack-level piece where the Weeknd’s penchant for the dramatic is on full display. Later, on “The Abyss,” Lana Del Rey’s trademark poetic ability is included in pitch-perfect fashion, slinking onto the track during its quietest moments and stealing the show with delicate melodies.
Though throwing on anything from The Weeknd in hopes of a pick-me-up is usually a flawed concept once you dig into the lyrics, Hurry Up Tomorrow isn’t without its breaks from the pessimistic undertones. For one, “Niagara Falls” is a sparkling ballad where we get a rare moment of reflexive introspection, seeming to revisit the Trilogy days through the lens of a short-term dalliance from that time period.
Hurry Up Tomorrow Finds A Fitting End For “The Weeknd” As A Project
Copping rose-colored glasses in this way may not be a rarity in the music industry as a whole, but hearing two distinct phases of life juxtaposed in Abel’s head certainly is. The fact that the production underneath is utterly transfixing, working an unexpected chiptune sample that’d usually be more at home on a house song onto brooding digital instrumentation.
As we churn to a close on “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” a kitschy ’80s ballad in the best sense of the word, things come full circle. Narratively, there’s no neat resolution to any of Abel’s complicated traumas; he’s wishing for a brighter future and a reprieve, above all else, the same way he has throughout his career. But there lies the point. The high-pitched tone at the end of the song is an intentional choice, another seamless transition when played up against “High For This,” the first track from his House of Balloons, the mixtape that began the entire journey.
Picking things back up where they started may be a bit on the nose depending on your tastes, but given the incredible success that The Weeknd enjoyed leading up to Hurry Up Tomorrow (countless plaques, records and a Super Bowl Halftime performance), if there’s anyone who’s earned the moment, it’s him. A sprawling, dense record capped off with this sort of proposition is only right, and though what will come in this next Abel Tesfaye chapter is unclear, truly the catalog that he leaves behind as The Weeknd is one deserving of this full-throated celebration.
Catch Hurry Up Tomorrow and the (now complete) The Weeknd catalog wherever you stream your music.
Elsewhere in our coverage, catch up on what you missed from Sunday’s awards with our recap of the 2025 Grammys.
