The Weeknd’s persona used to be all about darkness and mystery. For a while, he didn’t even show his face. Instead, he was just a soft voice singing about drugs and having calloused sex with women.
Eventually, he would embrace pop stardom, but the hedonistic themes and subject matter still stuck. The Weeknd would border on pure villainy with how he indulged in old-fashioned misogyny and shunned the idea of romance. He’d go on to mature, and his toxic resolve would soften over the years, where he’d craft irresistible pop songs anyone could get into.
But in 2015, The Weeknd was far from that line of thinking. On “Tell Your Friends”, he said that he was a “villain in my city.” During a 2015 interview with Pitchfork, he doubled down on the line, arguing that the bad guys are the best characters in movies. Moreover, he shared the villain he finds some similarities with.
The Weeknd Explained Why He Liked to Embrace The Role of a Villain
“The Joker is my favorite villain of all time: You don’t know his past, you just know what his plans are,” The Weeknd said. “The Joker that Christopher Nolan created in The Dark Knight had the scar across his mouth, and the first time you heard his explanation for it, he makes you believe that’s how he got it. But then you get into the film, and every time he talks about his scar, it’s a totally different story.”
“That tells you what kind of person he is; he’s not telling you who he is. It’s kind of how I am—or how I was: You know me, but you don’t know me. I give you what I want to give you. I relate to villains like that—but I’m not out to destroy the world,” The Weeknd continued, laughing.
It’s this stark line of thinking that made him brush off anyone upset at the toxicity in his songwriting back then. At the end of the day, he didn’t feel like it impacted how people perceived his art. Consequently, his thinking is that he must have toed the line well enough to create his fanbase.
“But I don’t feel like I’ve ever pushed it to the point where they can’t understand or respect the art, because it is art. Music is like film to me. When Tarantino makes a movie, he gets people shitting on him 24/7, but it’s his art, and he stands by it. And at the end of the day, my listeners love it, I love it, I hope you love it,” The Weeknd laughed again.
“The music I make on this album is definitely matured,” he added. “It’s a bit of a different state of mind, even though it’s the same person. You grow, and you grow, and you don’t know what the next album is going to be about. You never know what I’m going to say.”
The post The Weeknd Confessed That He ‘Relates’ to a Famous Comic Book Villain, but Isn’t ‘Out To Destroy the World’ appeared first on VICE.
