Though Taylor Swift is the girl you love to hate, especially when she attempts to tell you terms and activities relating to New York City, no one can deny her ability to write a pop song you can’t shake from your head (even if she occasionally strikes out). Which is one of the primary points of pop music: to saturate the collective mind. The Weeknd, because of his electro-hip hop bent, however, isn’t subjected to quite the same level of malignment as Swift. That, and, yes, he’s a man–a gender that has long held the “privilege” (to borrow one of the song titles from his new EP) of using women as material for their “work”–no matter what written form it comes in.
In 2018, however, not everyone is so willing to accept this form of female exploitation (just ask Wendy Williams). Of course, there aren’t that many detractors of The Weeknd’s My Dear Melancholy, a six-track lack of homage to a ten-month relationship with Selena Gomez, who, incidentally, seems to be making quite a few unwitting headlines of late. There is, in fact, no shortage of praise for the offering, naively described as “tragic and brooding, depressive and introspective.”
As Kanye once declared of Taylor, “I made that bitch famous,” The Weeknd, too, seems to be taking some bizarre and unwarranted credit for Selena’s so-called success on the opening track, “Call Out My Name” (which only conjures images of Call Me By Your Name). Insisting, “I put you on top, I put you on top/I claimed you so proud and openly/And when times were rough, when times were rough/I made sure I held you close to me,” The Weeknd seems quite assured in touting all he did as a boyfriend and a lover, even though, lest we forget, Gomez was the one who wrote an exuberant and accordingly bathetic love song to him in the initial phases of their romance with “Bad Liar” (even if it did had a lame in shock value video to accompany it). The Weeknd, all the same, is convinced that he was the one who did all the expressing, even when he tried his best to hide his emotions, as evidenced by the lyrics, “I said I didn’t feel nothing, baby, but I lied/I almost cut a piece of myself for your life [the over the top reference to his willingness to donate a kidney to her]/Guess I was just another pit stop/’Til you made up your mind/You just wasted my time.” But was it really a waste of time if you’re getting all this material out of it? A little money for your pain?
Getting even moodier on the second track, “Try Me,” The Weeknd lets his love for R. Kelly shine through with the comment, “You’re lookin’ grown since the last time I looked at you/It might have been, been about a couple months/You ain’t steady, you look ready to go all the way.” Allusions to her relationship with Justin Bieber (which seems to be taking a page from Miley Cyrus’ with Liam Hemsworth), The Weeknd grossly chides, “I thought you had some kind of love for your man/Well, I’m not tryna break up something/You’ve been workin’ out, you’ve been steady/But I’m ready to go all the way if you let me/Don’t you tempt me.” Yet obviously, it doesn’t take much to tempt a heteronormative panisse like The Weeknd’s.
“Wasted Times” sounds as though it could be about someone other than Gomez–specifically Bella Hadid–a girl more suited to the alleged title of “true love” as he further drags Gomez through the mud by singing to another, “Wasted times I spent with someone else/She wasn’t even half of you/Reminiscin’ how you felt/And even though you put my life through hell/I can’t seem to forget ’bout you, ’bout you/I want you to myself.” Listen, even Taylor Swift wouldn’t go so far as to be this cruel toward an ex, talking some shit about how a guy from before was far superior.
If not for My Dear Melancholy,‘s sonic redemption, it might be too ghastly from a thematic and lyrical standpoint, so blatantly exploitive as it is. In point of fact, the album is at its best when Lyon’s own musical genius Gesaffelstein assists in the production, as is the case with “I Was Never There” and “Hurt You.” On the former, The Weeknd persists in his “subtle” vitriol with a motif that speaks to no longer feeling satisfied by a girl and “when it’s time, it’s time”–as though Gomez wasn’t the one who dumped his ass. Still, he seems quite content with his sexual memories of Hadid, once again paraded on “Hurt You.”
Despite The Weeknd seeming to, in the fandom of Lana Del Rey, be considered a male foil, he is all Taylor on this release. And, in Del Rey’s case, she doesn’t intend on using various men as material, once having stated, “I’m always singing about the same goddamn person. I’ll love him forever.” It’s only upon occasion that a sleazoid in the vein of G-Eazy will make a cameo of inspiration in songs like “In My Feelings.” Thus, The Weeknd can only be compared to Swift, who as stated before, has still never “used her men as muses” quite so brutally.
The outro, “Privilege,” wraps up all of his contempt in a neat little bow in terms of painting himself as the victim as he alludes to “going back to his old ways” a.k.a. drinking and drugging again. How sorry we feel for your modelizing lifestyle as you throw what amounts to a roughly twenty-two minute tantrum about being rejected for a different Canadian.
Claiming, “I don’t wanna hurt you” on the appropriately abridged title “Hurt You,” what else is the point of My Dear Melancholy, if not just that? Unless you’re trying to dance to the shit at Amnesia. But what can you do when R. Kelly is one of your primary musical influences? You’re doomed to be an assholio toward women in a way that’s neither from a genuine place of pain nor particularly innovative. Just like Taylor, who, in all honesty, is merely picking up where Alanis Morissette left off (goddamn there are a lot of Canadians).
