The Hills: a song review

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye or the artist known as The Weeknd is a Canadian R&B and Soul singer who found success by working with artists like Drake and Ariana Grande. The Weeknd is one of the "new" big things of this year, for better or worse, he had 4 Top 20 Billboard Hits this far and to be honest I'm not that happy about that. The Weeknd has this style of singing that really annoys me. The Weeknd made it into the charts with Love Me Harder aa good song which all the good parts are attributed to Ariana Grande contribution, then with Earned It a song that I actively dislike probably more than I should only because of the very bad video, then The Hills a song I will discuss in a few seconds and then finally Can't Feel My Face that I really like because of a very Michael Jackson vibe and the fact that is on the better range of The Weeknd's voice, but has a few problems that are attributed too the questionable lyrics. Now that I got that out of the way we can start praising this song because I really like it.

First of all I love the sound, aggressive, industrial, a perfect fit for the Halloween and how the base kicks in with the hook. It makes a great contrast with the high pitched auto-tune voice of The Weeknd. It has a great atmosphere that makes you feel uncomfortable. It has a monstrous feel to it that just feels huge.

But does the sound match the lyrics?

"Your man on the road, he doin' promo
You said, "Keep our business on the low-low"
I'm just tryna get you out the friend zone"

OH, YES! The context makes everything, it's about picking up somebody's girlfriend and it helps that he isn't bragging about that.

"Found out I was comin', sent your friends home
Keep on tryna hide it but your friends know"

Instead he's telling the story of how he's done it and not going off with that he continues the story.

"I'ma let you know and keep it simple
Tryna keep it up don't seem so simple
I just fucked two bitches 'fore I saw you
And you gon' have to do it at my tempo"

But the hook is the key element that holds this song together for me.

"I only call you when it's half past five
The only time that I'll be by your side
I only love it when you touch me, not feel me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me, yeah
I only call you when it's half past five
The only time I'd ever call you mine
I only love it when you touch me, not feel me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me
When I'm fucked up, that's the real me, babe"

Where The Weeknd practically screams what the girl is to him and how genuinely awful he is. And it works. Because he isn't holding anything back, he isn't excuses, the topic is ugly so the song sounds ugly. It all has to do with the context and the framing.

This song reminds me of Love Me if Love Me was good. Love Me was awful because Wayne frame himself as the good guy. He was sleazy but still everybody loved him.

Overall I really like the song and the guy really gets better and better. One of the best hit songs of the year this far and it really makes me want to check out more from The Weeknd.

Beauty Behind the Madness: an album review (review to come)

Announcement: Soul Eater review and more...coming soon

Probably my favorite anime ever, one that's so good I decided to re-watch it again to see if I changed my opinion on. As it turns out I quite this is going to be a multi part review looking at ten episodes one after another. I'll put a spoiler warned paragraph on every episode review in chase you've seen the show.

Also as I want to tie in the Soul Eater wrap in my next "the obligatory Halloween themed review" week I plan.

Sicario

 Sicario is a dirty movie. And not in a good way. It's the kind of movie that makes you want to do a shower after it's over. It's like Se7en in that way. Bad things happen, no one can change that. I'm serious, if you have a very weak constitution you'll not take this film easy.

 Sicario is an example of craft over story (the best way possible though), it's drug-bust story with revenge elements to it that we all have seen before, but it's a good story but that's not my point. You ever had an uncle that was so cool to take you to a camp and told you stories there, and he had a way of telling stories so great that you begged for him to say the same stories over and over. That's Sicario in a nutshell. The story telling over weights the story. Like Memento. Memento has a "decent" story but the narrative it's what makes the film fantastic. Sicario has more going for than Memento. Sicario has one of the best scores of the year (composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson who also composed the score for The Theory of Everything), Roger Deakins  does wonders making Mexic look like a living hell and nighttime look like nighttime, Emily Blunt (in the best role of her career so far) proves that she really deserves more Oscar push, and Benicio del Toro gives maybe one of his best performances yet and, for sure, having one of his best character arcs yet. The only weak point of the movie, for me, was a subplot *SPOILERS* which seamed to take inspiration off Heat, which I felt was a bit unnecessary.

 I see myself changing the rating on a second watch but for now I would grade the film a bit less then some would expect. Still this is an astonishingly well made film, one that I really was looking forward, that sure would deserve a lot of award buzz this year. A-