Abel, I Owe you.

(Part 1 of 2)

4 min readApr 30, 2021

Let me get this straight, Abel Makkonen Tesfaye a.k.a The Weeknd is one of the greatest pop artists of our time. He is the kind of artist who is famous yet so underrated that feels weird? No matter how big hits he’s giving upon, he always remains unnoticed and snubbed. Yes, I’m talking about the greatest award snub of the century, even though he had chart bursting songs and literally the album ‘After Hours’ is the only good thing that happened to music in the year 2020, amidst the pandemic. I was very disappointed. I felt sorry for this man, his loss felt very personal to me, but I took a second to think, why should I grieve for his loss. Then I realized he had made my life better, his music was the only thing that held me when I was broken. He has inspired me in many ways. I and The Weeknd go a little way back, back to 2016.

The Era of Starboy

It was 2016, I was starting off my college and I’m pretty sure it was November, I was scrolling down through Instagram and I randomly came across the intro music of Starboy (Title track from the album Starboy by The Weeknd) and I was very much impressed while listening to it for the first time. I was new to this genre of music ‘Dark R&B’. So that was the first The Weeknd song I listened to. That’s where it all began. Then I went on and streamed all the other songs from the album Starboy, I was very much moved by the wholesomeness of that album but I didn’t want to stream any of his other albums because Starboy was quite sufficient since it had 18 tracks. Later by 2017, I was introduced to his previous album ‘Beauty Behind The Madness. The Hills, I can’t feel my face, man, what an album. So life was pretty simple and beautiful. But life doesn’t go that way, sometimes it turns the other way around.

Enter 2018

I’m a kind of person, socially awkward, not so good at being with people. So for a guy like me, even a little amount of love and attention from another person is so personal.

So my life was pretty good until 2018, I had a person to hang out with. Even a little amount of love from the will make us feel special and even if they hurt you a little it will cause you a miserable amount of pain.

By March 2018, I was at phase of depression, even though the reason for that deprssion was so negligible, it was way too hard for me handle that pain, I just wanted to cry out loud because I know it was the only way to let go of the sadness, but I can’t able to cry, I need something to pull sadness out and that's when The Weeknd released My Dear Melancholy.

Epitome of Darkness

I would call it as mother of coincidences, it was like I was in a urgent need of painkiller and the universe made The Weeknd to make another album. Unlike the previous two album (Starboy and Beauty Behind the Madness) ‘My Dear Melancholy was pretty different album, it was dark. The album only had 6 tracks, but those 6 tracks were like different phases of pain a man can go through. I was wondering why someone who made a peppy and vibrant album like Starboy make an dark and sad album My Dear Melancholy, later I got to know that The Weeknd broke up with her girlfriend (Selena Gomez). You could ask me, was my pain is as same as a break up, definitely not, but at the end of the day, the size of the scar dosen’t matter, the pain remains the same.

So ‘My Dear Melancholy’ was the only thing that held my life together, it helped my cry my pain out. I was very thankful to The Weeknd for composing that album and that’s when I realized I Owe The Weeknd a.k.a Abel Makkonen Tesfaye. He helped me to overcome one of my darkest phase of my life.

After that I discovered his first studio album ‘Trilogy’. Undoubtly the best R&B album I’ve listened my whole life.

I like to write. I’ve written cliched blogs and poems. Until I was introduced to ‘Trilogy’. It completely changed my way of writing, and this is where ‘The Weeknd started to inspire me as writer’.

Weeknd the Master Storyteller on part 2.