The Weeknd drives through purgatory (with a little help from Jim Carrey)

Dawn FM haunts internet genres to make The Weeknd’s best album yet

EPISODE 252

Dawn FM is The Weeknd’s most narratively compelling album yet. More than just a collection of eighties-nostalgia single bait, Dawn FM is a concept album that picks up on a multi-year meta narrative. Abel Tesfaye, seemingly killed off his character at the end of his last album, After Hours. Getting caught up in the “Blinding Lights” of fame and excess, the narrator ends up overdosing in the back of an ambulance. On the final song “Until I Bleed Out” he sings “I can’t move, I’m so paralyzed.” Dawn FM picks up where After Hours left off. The album opens with pastoral winds and bird sounds, with The Weeknd driving down the road searching for a light at the end of a tunnel. His radio is turned to a fictional radio station: 103.5 Dawn FM hosted by The Weeknd’s real life neighbor, the actor Jim Carrey. Channeled through the Vaporwave inspired production of Oneohtrixpoint Never, Dawn FM is the sound of purgatory.

SONGS DISCUSSED - Playlist

The Weeknd - Take My Breath, Earned It, Can’t Feel My Face, Starboy, Alone Again, Blinding Lights, Dawn FM, Gasoline, How Do I Make You Love Me, Sacrifice, A Tale By Quincy, Out of Time, Starry Eyes, Every Angel is Terrifying, Hardest to Love 

Michael Jackson - Dirty Diana, Human Nature

Johann Sebatian Bach, Víkingur Ólafsson - Prelude & Fugue in C Minor

The Cure - Just like Heaven

Burial - Archangel

Ariel Pink - Trepanated Earth

James Ferraro - Adventures in Green Foot Printing

Oneohtrix Point Never - nobody here 

Chris de Burgh - The Lady In Red

Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen

Da Funk - Daft Punk