Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, born in Toronto, Canada, on February 16, 1990, is best known around the world as The Weeknd. Tesfaye has grown up listening to a variety of musical genres including soul, quiet storm, hip hop, funk, indie rock and post-punk. After a troubled teenage years, at 17, Abel decided to drop out of school and leave his mother’s house. This period was complicated, as he admitted to the New York Times: “My mother looked at me as if I had failed”. The musician even says he adopted his stage name “The Weeknd” after leaving school with a classmate and “left home in a weekend and never came back”. At the end of 2010, he released several songs under his pseudonym “The Weeknd” on his YouTube account, keeping his true identity anonymous. In 2011, he released three mixtapes of nine songs each that are available only for digital download: House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence. The three releases were very well received by the critics. In 2012, they released a compilation album, Trilogy, which consists of remastered versions of the songs contained in the mixtapes, as well as three new songs. The following year he published his first studio album, Kiss Land.The second album, Beauty Behind the Madness, was the first of the singer to reach the first place on the Billboard 200 chart. It includes the US and UK top singles “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills”, along with the top-five single (also in the US and UK) “Earned It”. The three songs were simultaneously in the top three Billboard Hot R&B charts, making Tesfaye the first artist in history to perform such a feat.In 2016, he released his third studio album, Starboy, whose theme of the same name became Tesfaye’s third #1 on the top charts in the US and UK.In March 2018, he surprisingly released the EP My Dear Melancholy, which reached the top of the US album charts.
Discography
2013 – Kiss Land
2015 – Beauty Behind the Madness
2016 – Starboy
EP
2018 – My Dear Melancholy,
Collections
2012 – Trilogy
Mixtape
2011 – House of Balloons
2011 – Thursday
2011 – Echoes of Silence
Singles
2012 – Wicked Games
2012 – Twenty Eight
2013 – Kiss Land
2013 – Live For
2014 – Wanderlust
2014 – Often
2014 – Love Me Harder
2014 – Earned It
2015 – The Hills
2015 – Can’t Feel My Face
2015 – In the Night
2016 – Acquainted
2016 – Starboy
2016 – False Alarm
2016 – Party Monster
2016 – I Feel It Coming
2017 – Reminder
2017 – Rockin’
2017 – Die for You
2017 – Secrets
2018 – Pray for Me
2018 – Call Out My Name
2019 – Lost in the Fire
2019 – Power Is Power
2019 – Heartless
2019 – Blinding Lights
