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.
0 kommentar(er)
