THE ARTIST I STREAMED THE MOST IN FEBRUARY IS THE WEEKND (TAKE MY BREATH)

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer-songwriter and record producer. Known for his sonic versatility and dark lyricism, Tesfaye's music explores escapism, romance, and melancholia, and is often inspired by personal experiences.

Born: 16 February 1990 (age 32 years), Toronto, Canada
Full name: Abel Makkonen Tesfaye
Parents: Samra Tesfaye, Makkonen Tesfaye

Midway through Abel Tesfaye’s fifth album as the Weeknd, the former blog-friendly miserabilist turned Super Bowl-starring megastar muses: “Catalogue lookin’ legendary”. It’s hard to disagree. His last album, 2020’s After Hours, spawned the record-breaking Blinding Lights, a glorious slice of electro-pop that joined Can’t Feel My Face and Starboy in the modern pop canon.

While Dawn FM doesn’t feature anything that screams global ubiquity – although disco-tinged lead single Take My Breath comes close – it also represents his most pleasingly cohesive album. Built around a retro radio station soundtracking purgatory, its featherlight, 80s-style pop – created alongside the likes of hitmaker Max Martin and electronic experimentalist Oneohtrix Point Never – is juxtaposed with lyrics that toy with annihilation. On eerie opener Gasoline, Tesfaye asks a lover to literally set him on fire, while songs such as Sacrifice and the shimmering Less Than Zero wrestle with past misdeeds and the sense that emotional destruction is all he knows.

Musically, Dawn FM mirrors Tesfaye’s disquiet, its buffed electronic sheen ruptured by moments of discord, as when ballad Starry Eyes teeters on the brink of implosion. It’s a state that Tesfaye seems to relish, with often stunning results.

All good artists evolve, and The Weeknd has shown in the last couple years that the sky truly is the limit when it comes to his musicality. In a continuation of the 80s inspired sound from After Hours, his newest single “Take My Breath” is a deeper exploration into the sounds that brought an entire generation to the dance floor every weekend.

As the song begins, I thought I had accidentally clicked on a Stevie Nicks song. It grooves differently, and quickly gets into the groove it after the guitar has introduced itself. The four-on-the-floor beat starts, and in comes the retro synths, setting the tone just perfectly. To say The Weeknd’s voice suits the song perfectly is an understatement. The Michael Jackson-esque tone over this irresistibly groovy instrumentation gives it this “Bad” vibe. With that being said, this is so obviously a The Weeknd song by no other merit than its quality, tone and execution. He has managed to set such an expectation with his releases, and “Take My Breath” truly is next level. The harmonies in the last chorus are especially heavenly, and unlike anything I’ve personally heard from The Weeknd. Compositionally, its structure fits the tone perfectly, bringing the artist’s ideas to sound beautifully.

Subjectively speaking, I don’t think I need to point out that this is one of my favorite songs from The Weeknd. Being part of a greater project, “Take My Breath” is a masterful window into the music that is to come from the singer. It’s a groovy song that makes it impossibly hard not to move your body as the beat pounds through the song from start to finish, in the same dark-disco way that The Weeknd introduced in “After Hours”.

Take My Breath

After listening to this song and the album I just fall in the with take my breath I have been listening non stop everyday and it my favorite song in the Dawn fm album I recommend everyone to listen the Dawn fm album.
#FebruaryWrapUp #TheWeeknd #prettyjessy