The Weeknd’s Albums, Ranked Worst to Best

Label: XO/Republic

Producers: The Weeknd, DannyBoyStyles, DaHeala, Harry Fraud, Silkky Johnson, Pharrell Williams, Sebastian, and Hollemon

Features: Drake

You could break up the Weeknd’s catalog into before and after Kiss Land. Before: sex, drugs, and wild thoughts wrapped in the mysterious air of the Trilogy that signaled an artist on a trajectory of undeniable star power. After: a mainstream juggernaut. And Kiss Land? A project that sounds more like the comedown of the highs experienced from his breakout. “I went from starin’ at the same four walls for 21 years/To seein’ the whole world in just 12 months,” Weeknd sings on the title track. But instead of an eye-opening presentation, there’s even more isolation, which makes the performance stagnant.

“Trilogy is my experiences in those four walls,” he told Complex in 2013. “Kiss Land is me doing the things I did in Trilogy in different settings.”

While Kiss Land is largely perceived as a musical misfire, it still has moments to savor, like the aforementioned title track, or “Wanderlust,” which in a way works as a Michael Jackson-esque stepping stone to “Can’t Feel My Face.” “Live For” may not live up to past collaborations between Weeknd and Drake, but it served as proof the XO and OVO generals were—at the time—on good terms despite reports of an issue after Weeknd signed to Republic through his own label instead of with Drake. As the ancient meme proverb goes, if you don’t love the Weeknd at Kiss Land, you don’t deserve him at, well, any other project. —Edwin Ortiz

Label: XO

Producers: Illangelo, DropxLife, Clams Casino

Features: Juicy J

Echoes of Silence serves as the last marker of the Weeknd’s enigmatic persona, preceding his thrust into the spotlight with the release of his debut studio album, Kiss Land. The tape starts off strong with the track “D.D.,” an homage to Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana.” Abel’s eerie impersonation of MJ is cause for praise and an obvious indicator of his pure, raw talent.

Echoes of Silence is an essential addition to the Weeknd’s catalog and demonstrative of his versatility within his own genre while exploring others foreign to him. With tracks like “Montreal” and “XO,” the Weeknd paved the way for the future of his pop-inspired songs and, in turn, a destiny for success. This last installation of his trilogy of tapes holds onto the sad boy confidence that day one fans grew to love. The title track—arguably one of the tape’s strongest tracks—tells the age-old tale in the Weeknd’s discography of losing out in love, a trope that would guide his body of work into the contemporary scene. —Alessandra Maldonado

Label: XO/Republic

Producers: Frank Dukes, Mike Will Made It, DaHeala, Marz, Skrillex, Gesaffelstein, de Homem-Christo, and Cirkut

Features: Gesaffelstein

After the release of Starboy, you can’t fault Weeknd fans for expecting more of that sound when it came to the release of his following effort, My Dear Melancholy,. This project, which ended up being a seven-track EP that looked back at the trilogy of mixtapes that made the Weeknd everyone’s favorite sadboy, had its moments; “Wasted Times” and “Hurt You” are certified bops. However, the project overall was definitely underwhelming. Judging by word on the street, this could be the first in a three-EP series from the Weeknd, which opens the future potential of this EP right up. Also, it’s hard to top what Weeknd debuted with, so a shortened version of his 2011 style, no matter how satisfying, is ultimately put on the back burner. —khal

Label: XO/Republic

Producers: The Weeknd, Ali Payami, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Ben Billions, Benny Blanco, Bobby Raps, Cashmere Cat, Cirku,t Daft Punk, Diplo, Doc McKinney, Frank Dukes, Jake One, Labrinth, Max Martin, Mano, Metro Boomin, and Swish

Features: Daft Punk, Lana Del Rey, Kendrick Lamar, and Future

Starboy finds Abel grappling with the fame he found when “I Can’t Feel My Face” took off. “I just won a new award for a kids show/Talking ’bout a face numbing off a bag of blow,” he sings on “Reminder,” which is perhaps the album’s most famous lyric.

But he doesn’t run away from the fame, creating one of his poppiest, most MJ-like creations with “I Feel It Coming.” In some ways, Starboy is the sound of confusion. The Weeknd can’t decide if he wants to be the nihilist of old, whose crew “don’t pray for love/We just pray for cars,” or a pop star who writes ballads with titles like “True Colors.” The fact that he tries to have all of the above is simultaneously the album’s biggest strength and the thing that stops it from being an indispensable addition to his catalog. —Shawn Setaro

Label: XO/Republic

Producers: The Weeknd, Benny Bock, Brian Kennedy, Bruce Johnston, Calvin Harris, Charlie Coffeen, DaHeala, Gitty, Max Martin, OPN, Oscar Holter, Peter Lee Johnson, Rex Kudo, Swedish House Mafia, and Tommy Brown

Features: Tyler, the Creator and Lil Wayne

As the story goes, when Abel started working on the follow-up to After Hours in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he felt the songs were too weighed down by a feeling of depression, so he scrapped them. Instead, he wanted to make music that “sounded like going outside,” so he began working on an album full of more upbeat and danceable material: Dawn FM.

Highlighted by synthy, ’80s-inspired anthems like “Take My Breath,” “Out of Time,” “How Do I Make You Love Me?” and “Less Than Zero,” Dawn FM is a concept album about being stuck in purgatory and listening to a radio station on your way to the afterlife. But really, it’s an album begging to be played at 2:00 a.m. on a dance floor. These songs definitely sound like going outside. The Weeknd set out to help provide an escape from all the sadness and isolation the world has been experiencing through the pandemic, and he delivered.

Dawn FM is lower on this list than an album like After Hours, because Abel doesn’t do as good of a job at balancing his two sides—the shadowy, moody artist of the early mixtape days and the massive pop star we know now—but he does do a great job at packing a tracklist full of timeless hits and wrapping them around a compelling concept. This album is yet another reminder that, more than a decade into his career, the Weeknd is one of the best hitmakers of his time. —Eric Skelton

Label: XO/Republic

Producers: The Weeknd, Che’ Fuego 3000, Cirkut, Matt Cohn, DaHeala, Mike Dean, Teddy 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 Twisco, Travis Scott, Pharrell Williams

Features: Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, Florence and the Machine, Justice, Anitta, Future, Giorgio Moroder, Lana Del Rey, and Swedish House Mafia

If you’ve been following Abel, you know he’s a Letterboxd head—one of the true great movie buffs in pop music. And that means he understands what it takes to make a great trilogy: you’ve got to stick the landing.

Let’s talk stakes: Abel raised them early, announcing as far back as 2023 that The Weeknd era would end with this album. Hurry Up Tomorrow feels like a grand finale. At 84 minutes, it’s his longest album to date, with a production soundscape that’s bigger and bolder than anything he’s done before.

His last album, Dawn FM, was an ode to the ’80s-inspired pop sounds that shaped him. If that album was like David Lynch’s 1984 Dune, this one propels us to the year 10,191. The sounds here are stadium-loud, galactic, pulsating, and increasingly global, with influences ranging from Brazilian funk to European electronica.

Lyrically, the album explores the superstar grappling with the overwhelming pressures of fame. The infamous 2022 incident where he lost his voice during a show serves as a central theme.

There are incredible highs—like the Playboi Carti collaboration “Timeless” and a brilliant stretch from “Reflections” to “Take Me Back to LA,” where he’s levitating. Hurry Up Tomorrow is a strong album, but it doesn’t quite reach the groundbreaking heights of his best work. In many ways, it feels like the culmination of The Weeknd’s “star” era.

Or, to put it in terms The Weeknd would vibe with: as a final act in a trilogy, this album is more Return of the Jedi than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.—Dimas Sanfiorenzo

Label: XO/Republic

Producers: Ali Payami, Ben Billions, Che Pope, DaHeala, DannyBoyStyles, Illangelo, Kanye West, Labrinth, Max Martin, Mano, Peter Svensson, and Stephan Moccio

Features: Labrinth, Ed Sheeran and Lana Del Rey

Beauty Behind the Madness catapulted the Weeknd from niche R&B favorite to a solidified superstar. When Beauty Behind the Madness was released in 2015 it was clear that Abel was finally ready to step into the spotlight. If—for whatever reason—you hadn’t heard of the Weeknd before, by that summer he had become inescapable.

His lead single “Often” catered to his day one fans—containing the raunchy elements over hazy production that he’d become known for. His follow up, “The Hills” was a subtle step out of the comfort zone—with a hook showing potential for radio play. Then everything skyrocketed once “I Can’t Feel My Face” was released. It was everywhere, all of the time, and incredibly catchy. You’d think a song about literally doing coke until your face is numb wouldn’t hit mainstream radio—let alone snag a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award nomination—but you’d be wrong. —Adrienne Black

Label: XO

Producers: Doc McKinney and Illangelo

Features: Drake

Five months after releasing his breakthrough, critically acclaimed project, House of Balloons, the Weeknd casually dropped off Thursday. It picked up where House of Balloons left off, with the Weeknd singing desperately through his self-inflicted pain. Thursday is a funeral procession for love lost and bonds broken. It’s a dizzying affair, but there’s always a common thread moving from track to track: I don’t want us to be the end of me.

Whether it’s through drugs, a destructive relationship, or a deadly combination of both, the Weeknd sings like he’s ready for it all to come crashing down. But he steps back from the edge every time, rejuvenated enough to make it through the next track.

The centerpiece of the EP is “The Birds” Parts 1 and 2, which exist in the same suspended moment in the Weeknd’s universe, but on completely separate ends of the spectrum. Part 1 is high energy, a deliberate, propulsive march toward a breakup; Part 2 is an extended release, as the Weeknd watches his significant other disintegrate once it’s all said and done. As is thematically the case with most of the Weeknd’s material, he tries to swim in love, but winds up nearly drowning. Thursday was another close call. —Kiana Fitzgerald

Label: XO/Republic

Producers: The Weeknd, DaHeala, Illangelo, Kevin Parker, Max Martin, Metro Boomin, Notinbed, OPN, Oscar Holter, Prince 85, and Ricky Reed

Features: Ariana Grande

For the better part of a decade, the Weeknd has challenged himself with the daunting task of scaling his brooding Trilogy-era aesthetic up to a mainstream pop scope. Along the way, he has become one of the biggest artists in the world, but never quite pulled all the pieces together to deliver a top-to-bottom great major label studio album with no skips. That changed in 2020. After Hours is the first time he’s truly merged his two sides—the moody, mysterious artist of the early 2010s and the international pop star we heard on Starboy—in a seamless manner.

In some ways, this is the same Abel Tesfaye we’ve always known: He’s still singing tragic tales about overindulgence, toxic relationships, and drugs. But now the palette is more accessible, the production is more ambitious, and the songwriting is more mature. Most impressively, he’s figured out how to put a song like the sulking “Escape From LA” right next to an inescapable No. 1 hit record like “Heartless” on the same tracklist in a way that makes sense. Leaning on his innate knack for world-building, Abel created a cinematic universe—bloody nose and all—that pulls his diverging sonic textures into a cohesive unit that feels natural.

Like a large section of the Weeknd’s fanbase, we still hold a special place in our hearts for the raw, unfiltered nature of his breakout mixtapes, House of Balloons and Thursday, but Abel doesn’t have any interest in recreating those projects. He’s evolved to the point where he’d rather solve the exceedingly difficult puzzle of making global smash records that don’t sacrifice any of his own core artistic sensibilities. And that’s exactly what he pulled off here. —Eric Skelton

Label: XO

Producers: The Weeknd, Doc McKinney, Cirkut, Illangelo, Jeremy Rose, and Rainer

Features: N/A

Depraved is the one word I would use to describe House of Balloons, which gives us the sounds of an alcohol and drug-fueled bender with your crush on a winter night in Toronto. It was all laid out by a mysterious voice that many of us were able to relate to, even though we didn’t know who the fuck we were listening to. At the time of this project’s release, no one knew who the Weeknd was or even how he looked. Was he tall? Where was he from? Who was he signed to? It was all a mystery. All we knew was that he was able to tap into the darkest corners of love and lust for nine tracks of pure, unadulterated savagery.

When House of Balloons dropped, R&B was struggling to find itself again—most of the mainstream shit used the same formula. The top three songs on the R&B charts in 2011 were Miguel’s “Sure Thing,” Kelly Rowland’s “Motivation,” and Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now.” None of these songs sounded anything close to what we heard on House of Balloons. This was some super underground shit; it’s like the 36 Chambers of R&B because it shifted the game, ushering in a new wave that still has its fingerprints on the R&B being made today. The mystery surrounding this tape, along with its songwriting and production, is why Abel may never be able to top this again. (https://www.complex.com/shop/products/the-weeknd-complex-cover-x-gas-trading-card)This tape is magic. —Angel Diaz