The Weeknd

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, who is professionally known as The Weeknd, is a singer and songwriter from Canada. He is popular for his unconventional music production, artistic reinventions, and the use of falsetto register.

In 2009, Tesfaye started anonymously releasing music on YouTube, expressing his interest in music. Two years later, he co-founded the record label XO and released mixtapes like House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence, which made him famous for his unique style of contemporary and alternative R&B and for maintaining a sense of mystery surrounding his identity. In 2012, Tesfaye signed with Republic Records and re-issued his mixtapes for the Trilogy compilation album. He explored the dark wave genre for his debut studio album Kiss Land (2013), which debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200. After its release, Tesfaye began contributing to film soundtracks. His 2014 single “Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.

Tesfaye’s second album, Beauty Behind the Madness (2015), was a success both commercially and critically. It reached number one on the US Billboard 200, contained US Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles like “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills”, and won the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album, in addition to a nomination for Album of the Year. Tesfaye experimented with multiple genres in his third album, Starboy (2016), which also saw commercial success. It included the US number-one eponymous lead single (featuring Daft Punk) and “Die for You”, earning it the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album. Tesfaye returned to alternative R&B with his debut extended play, My Dear Melancholy (2018), which contained the US top-ten single “Call Out My Name”. He explored new wave and dream pop with his fourth studio album, After Hours (2020), which features the chart record-setting single “Blinding Lights” along with two US number-one singles, “Heartless” and “Save Your Tears”. Tesfaye began exploring dance-pop, leading to his fifth album, Dawn FM (2022), which included the US top-ten single “Take My Breath”. In 2023, he co-created and starred in the drama series The Idol, which was critically panned, although its accompanying soundtrack found modest commercial success.

The Weeknd is one of the best-selling music artists in the world, with over 75 million records sold. He also holds several streaming and Billboard chart records. He is the first Canadian artist to earn four diamond-certified singles from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and is the first artist to simultaneously hold the top three spots on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. “Blinding Lights” became the most-streamed song in Spotify history, the best-performing song in the Billboard Hot 100’s history and the longest-charting song by a solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100. Tesfaye was listed by Time as one of the world’s most influential people in 2020 and was dubbed the “world’s most popular artist” by Guinness World Records in 2023. He is an advocate for racial equality and food security, and was appointed as a World Food Programme Goodwill Ambassador in 2021. His accolades include four Grammy Awards, 20 Billboard Music Awards, 22 Juno Awards, six American Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, a Latin Grammy Award, and nominations for an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.