My Dear Melancholy

Released March 30, 2018 via XO and Republic, My Dear Melancholy dropped with almost no warning a year and a half after Starboy and pulled The Weeknd back into the shadows of Trilogy and Kiss Land. Frank Dukes produced most of it and executive produced with Tesfaye. Gesaffelstein and Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo are among the hands feeding one sealed mood: sad synthesizers, downcast beats, hooks buried under the gloom. "I Was Never There" wails like a distant cousin of the Kill Bill theme, and "Call Out My Name" turns a breakup into a slow, bruised waltz that reached No. 4 on the Hot 100.

"Try Me" and "Wasted Times" stay in the same late-night register, "Hurt You" pushes the mood further into the dark, and "Privilege" closes on a quiet goodbye to the pain. Fans spent weeks guessing who the songs were about, and the record cares more about the hangover than the gossip. It moved 169,000 units in its first week, the shortest album by track count to top the Billboard 200 in eight years, and has since gone Platinum in the US.

CD EP, The Weeknd's first.