The Highlights

Sound DNA

• Soul & Funk
• Contemporary R&B

• holographic
• hedonistic
• nocturnal

About

For an artist like The Weeknd, putting together a greatest hits compilation must be especially difficult; each era and microevolution of his career feels deserving unto itself. His second such collection, <i>The Highlights</i>, manages the task with ease, pulling together all of his, well, highlights, stretching all the way to the beginning to include two cuts from his 2011 debut <i>House of Balloons</i>. (<i>The Highlights</i>' release only misses the 10-year anniversary mark by a month.) In a clever touch, the compilation doesn't unfold sequentially. Instead, it gets moodier and darker as it goes on. The bright keys and danceable Max Martin-produced '80s pop that have defined the latter half of his career open the proceedings like the climb of an intensely euphoric high. Songs like “Save Your Tears” (from 2020's <i>After Hours</i>), “Can't Feel My Face” (from 2015's <i>Beauty Behind the Madness</i>), and “Starboy” (from 2016's <i>Starboy</i>) sound like neon club lights and the sins committed beneath them. Then it pivots, slowly but steadily, to the comedown, where the singer's self-loathing finds a natural match in hazier, muddier productions. By the time the run of songs that includes “Call Out My Name” (from 2018's <i>My Dear Melancholy,</i>), “Die for You” (<i>Starboy</i>), and “Earned It” (<i>Beauty</i>) arrives, it's all id and nothing to cut it. And where else to go from there but to the original blueprint of his wounded, bleeding heart—“Wicked Games” and “The Morning” (both from <i>House of Balloons</i>)—where the lines between pleasure and pain blur into oblivion.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits