Coming off a great year of music in 2021, The Weeknd started off the year by releasing his next anticipated project, ‘Dawn FM’, but the album fell short of expectations.
After his huge commercial and critical success of his album, ‘After Hours’ in 2020, many were ready to see how this album would paint the picture of music to come this year.
He had grand expectations from his fans and music lovers everywhere. With After Hours and his previous music, he caused a huge resurgence in a genre many thought was long gone.
The 80s synth type pop and R&B wave went out of style a long time ago but The Weeknd brought it back and did it fantastically.
This is why everyone expected much more from ‘Dawn FM’ which ended up being slightly disappointing.
The Weeknd is one of this generation’s greatest talents to ever create music. With his unique style and unusual persona, he creates an experience for his listeners that puts them in his world and his state when making the album.
‘Dawn FM’ was not short of that, but lacked so much.. The album had features from Tyler the Creator and Lil Wayne and also had Jim Carrey hosting the album along with some spoken word from the great Quincy Jones.
With all this being revealed, my expectations were heightened to name this as a potential album of the year, already in January.
It’s safe to say I got ahead of myself. Though this album was very star-studded, it just seemed like something was missing. It wasn’t a complete letdown but it felt as if it was thrown together.
It took a year for Abel, aka The Weeknd, to write and produce the album. He gave us his typical 80s style that we have gotten for the last year. He just did not put his own unique spin and twist on the album that listeners expected.
If it takes a year to release an album, fans will expect something different. For someone who is as talented as The Weeknd, ‘Dawn FM’ is a disappointing turn.
The best part of the album is its production. He had some great songs on there and Jim Carrey and Quincy added a great storytelling element to the album but there was also a lot of misses. The album run time was 52 minutes with 16 songs and only 10 found their way into my playlist.
The best song from the album was “Here We Go…Again”, which had a feature with Tyler the Creator. Along with the production, The features and storytelling were the best part of this album and made it seem complete.
“Dawn FM” had a lot of potential, but I feel as if it was rushed and deserved some more time in the studio before its release.
Rating: 6/10
