The Weeknd Releases Hurry Up Tomorrow

The Weeknd has a special knack for making catchy and accessible pop music that is also sonically interesting, dark, and melancholy. It's hard to believe that his first release, Beauty Behind the Madness, was released almost a decade ago, but if you are just joining the conversation, his tracks "Can't Feel My Face", "The Hills", "Blinding Lights", "Starboy" and others in the billions of streams club, manage to have multi-generational appeal, and span pop, hip-hop, R&B, and electronic music genres with grace.

Hurry Up Tomorrow is another excellent offering from The Weeknd, and features several guests including Justice, Travis Scott, Anitta, Future, Florence + The Machine, Playboi Carti, Lana Del Rey, and even an appearance from Giorgio Moroder.

The 22 song track listing runs the gamut from frenetic EDM festival bangers, to '70s- and '80s-flavored R&B soul jams, beautiful space ballads, tracks with tweaked and Auto-Tuned vocals, melting synths, vocoders, classical chord progressions, and everything in between. This is not to say Hurry Up Tomorrow is not a cohesive work. With this many songs, it is a listening and sonic journey that asks something of the listener. The Weeknd has always worn his influences on his sleeve, and for me, hearing these references both in the songwriting and sonic choices makes for a fun listen.

The album has many contributors, including Mike Dean, who we interviewed in Tape Op #122. Mike engineered much of the album, mixed several tracks, co-produced and mastered the record as well.

The Weeknd was involved in much of the album's production with contributions from Fantum, Patrick Greenaway, Oscar Holter, ILYA, Johnny Jewel, Peter Lee Johnson, Just Da 1, Justice, Max Martin, Metro Boomin, Giorgio Moroder, Ojivolta, OPN, Tommy Parker, Prince85, Tommy Rush, Nathan Salon, Sage Skolfield, Sean Solymar, Swedish House Mafia, TBHits, Thabo, Erdem Özler, Twisco, Pharrell Williams, Che' Fuego 3000, Cirkut, Matt Cohn, DaHeala, and Teddy Fantom.

As mentioned, the album was engineered by Mike Dean, Sage Skolfield, Tommy Rush, Sean Kamiyama, Nathan Salon, Sam Holland, Ethan Stevens, Mike Larson, and Sean Solymar, mixed by Mike Dean, Serban Ghenea, Sage Skolfield, Tommy Rush, Bryce Bordone, Pharell Williams, and Nathan Salon.