The latter scene is a clear nod to Nicolas Wilding Refn’s recent art-house shocker The Neon Demon and its ornate vision of fashion models that transform into bloodthirsty animals. It found him entering a nightclub shaded in red and blue hues, where he seeks out and gyrates with the French model Anais Mali, and then he’s nearly knifed by a jealous suitor – before Mali transforms into a panther and decapitates the assailant. Two days before Starboy‘s release, the Weeknd dropped a short film titled Mania. (He hasn’t acknowledged claims that Nigerian afrobeats vocalist Wizkid used the name “Starboy” first.) Yes, the Weeknd cut his dreads in favor of a fetching ink-blot mohawk he’s working with Daft Punk, who produced the title track and “I Feel It Coming” and he’s got a nickname that he has said pays homage to the late David Bowie. However, Starboy, which follows a mixed critical reception to teaser tracks “Starboy” and “Party Monster,” just sounds like clichés wrapped in prettier packaging. Beauty Behind the Madness was a stunning leap forward into the pop stratosphere, and its standout moments more than outweighed its weaker tracks. Kiss Land may have sounded like Trilogy redux, but at least it offered a thrilling reprise of Eighties underground darkwave as well as his mordantly inspired meditations on the first rush of international fame.
The Weeknd has managed to offer some kind of ingenuity in spite of his well-worn shticks in the past. We know that his songs will explore love as either a tortured form of codependency or transactional pornography that he will boast of his forays into a one-percent world of luxury vehicles, white lines and sylph-like women and that the beats will possess a synthesized sheen that gleams like coated stock paper in Vogue magazine. “It just seems like niggas trying to sound like my old shit,” sings the Weeknd on “Reminder.” Ironically, years after remaking contemporary R&B in his druggy, sex-obsessed vision on his iconic debut EP House of Balloons, the Toronto singer has settled into a familiar routine.