The Weeknd: A Teenager Left Home One Weekend and Became Spotify’s Biggest Name
Abel Tesfaye grew up in Toronto, the son of Ethiopian immigrants. At around 17 he dropped out of high school and left home one weekend in a van with a friend. That weekend became his stage name, and he dropped the “e” because a Canadian band called The Weekend already existed.
In 2011 he put “House of Balloons” online, a dark, late-night R&B mixtape, and gave it away for free. No label was behind it. Four years later he won two Grammys for “Beauty Behind the Madness”.
In September 2016 he released “Starboy” with Daft Punk. It went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, his third chart-topper and the only No. 1 of Daft Punk’s career.
Then came “Blinding Lights”. Released in November 2019, it hit No. 1 in March 2020 and set records: 43 weeks in the top five, 57 in the top ten, 86 in the top forty, 90 on the chart overall. In November 2021 Billboard named it the greatest Hot 100 song of all time, ahead of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist”. In January 2023 it became the most-streamed song in Spotify history.
In February 2021 he headlined the Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa, and his manager said he spent $7 million of his own money on it. In February 2023 he became the first artist ever to pass 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Today he is around 115 million. You can hear him on the station “The Weeknd” in the Exclusive section of Kalisha.
— Kalisha 🎧
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