Abel Tesfaye also played new music for 'GQ' and doubled down on his choice to brush off the Grammys moving forward.
After teasing his musical follow-up to the blockbuster album After Hours at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards, it looks like the next taste of the Weeknd's new project is finally here.
Abel Testafe dropped a one-and-half-minute teaser of the thumping, tantalizing "The Dawn Is Coming" overnight, tweeting "f—k it, it starts tonight" on Sunday (Aug. 2). The teaser clip plays like an anime or video game landscape; in keeping with the dawn theme, the camera races over a barren surface toward a blazing sun in a fiery red-orange sky, getting enveloped by the bright orb the moment Tesfaye sings, "Take my hand."
While the vocals are as moody and gorgeous as we've come to expect from the Weeknd, the music is propelled forward by a pounding, relentless synthesizer, bringing to mind the kind of nimble, arresting and irresistible synth riff that Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer delivered with the game-changing "I Feel Love."