Despite Controversy, The Weeknd’s Career is Still Going Strong

By Alyana Spence | Staff Editor

Canadian singer and songwriter

Abel Tesfaye, known publicly as The Weeknd, has broken countless records since his rise to fame. The Weeknd now has five diamond singles, which makes him only the fourth artist to earn five or more diamond certifications.

Many Olathe North students are a part of Tesfaye’s fanbase. According to a poll of 37 Olathe North students, 65% of respondents claimed that they listen to The Weeknd’s music.

Recently, Tesfaye has been dominating the Spotify charts, becoming the first artist in Spotify history to hit 100 million monthly listeners, and the number has continued to rise even after he hit this mark. Tesfaye already held the title for most played song of all time on the platform with his hit single “Blinding Lights,” which was released in 2020.

In June 2021, news broke out that Tesfaye was working on writing and planning his own television series. A few months later, actress Lily-Rose Depp was cast as a lead in the show alongside Tesfaye himself, and HBO took over production in November 2021. The series, titled The Idol, features many other big names such as Blackpink member Jennie Kim, singer Troye Sivan, and Shiva Baby star Rachel Sennott, among others. Anticipation for the show only grew when Tesfaye premiered the first teaser for the series while on tour in July 2022. Two more teaser trailers followed, the second released in August 2022 and the third in October 2022. The exact date for the release has not yet been announced, however, it is set to premiere on HBO Max “in 2023,” according to the platform.

On March 1, Rolling Stone published an article including information from 13 anonymous sources of the show’s cast and crew that claimed The Idol is a disaster and described the show as “twisted torture porn.” The article, written by Cheyenne Roundtree, claimed the upcoming series was having major production issues including delays and rewrites, and that these problems were the result of Sam Levinson, director of Euphoria, taking over as director. Many of the sources also claimed that the show had originally intended to highlight the ways the entertainment industry takes advantage of women, but had completely deviated from this feminist perspective after Levinson replaced Amy Seimetz as director. One source explained that they felt as though the series “went from satire to the thing it was satirizing”. Shortly after this article was published, Tesfaye tweeted a clip from the show tagging Rolling Stone and saying, “did we upset you?” The snippet showed Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp’s characters talking with Schitt’s Creek actor Dan Levy, with Tesfaye’s character referring to Rolling Stone as “irrelevant”. This response received mixed reactions. Some fans were angry that Tesfaye did not address the allegations from the article, while others seemed to laugh at the notion that The Weeknd could be “canceled.” This news seems to have had little effect on Tesfaye’s career as it was reported on March 20 that his monthly Spotify listeners have climbed to 111.4 million, nearly 30 million more listeners than second place Miley Cyrus.