The Weeknd's Dawn FM Part 2

     Okay, so I’ve talked about my beginning impressions of the album and my analysis of the songs up to “Is There Someone Else?”, so let’s just continue this.

    After facing this mixing pot of emotions and thoughts, the Weeknd tries to find solace by helping someone he loves. In the song “Starry Eyes”, we hear a lot of isolated and echoey vocals that represent the Weeknd’s solo mission to heal this woman’s heart at the cost of his own. The song starts off with glee as he talks about how he finally met the girl of his dreams but realizes that she also carries her own trauma. Trying to help her be the best she can be, he sacrifices himself because he thinks he’s unfixable. Towards the end of the song, he says, “Back then, I was starry-eyed and now I’m so cynical baby, break me kick me to the curb.” The song “Sacrifices” showed a different perception of what the Weeknd thought of himself, but now we can see that he’s slowly losing grasp of that self-image.

    Up next we got “Every Angel is Terrifying” and uh… this one is a bit of a doozy. I’m gonna try my best to see if I can decode this, but what I got from the start of a song were a lot of synths and retro sounds to remind us of the soundtrack of Dawn FM. These sounds remind us that we’re still listening to this album even though the journey isn’t a smooth one. We’re followed with the Weeknd reciting lines from a poem that point out that the things we find beautiful in life can also be the same tools of our destruction, making every angel terrifying. This then cuts to what sounds like a radio ad for this product “After Life”, a cinematic experience that is a must-have. To me, this can be interpreted in many ways like I could totally see the next album being named “After Life” and this snippet was just a tease for what’s coming. I could also see this being a tool for expanding the narrative we’re going over, so I’ll save that for later when I go over the radio snippets as well. ONWARDS!

    “Don’t Break My Heart” shows us how weak the Weeknd has become from his long battle of self-love. The sounds of this song remind me of a disco dance set, probably to replicate the sounds of an old discotheque. In this song, we see our singer try to find love in a desperate manner. He feels numb from all the thinking he’s put into this journey, and he wants to find someone to make him feel something. He does find someone, and he knows that she’s not good for him. But in a plead for help, he’s willing to go through with this relationship to stop falling apart. All he asks is “Just don’t break my heart don’t let me down, please”.

    “I Heard You’re Married” is another confusing song to the mix because we see the same issues that are mentioned thus far. We see the Weeknd messing around with a married girl and ends up developing feelings for her, but also acknowledges the pain in messing around with someone that can never be yours. It’s interesting because I see the maturity where our singer is able to step back, analyze the relationship, and develop his own opinions on cheating yet he’s the one who’s allowing this toxic behavior to occur as well. This to me shows evidence that the Weeknd is struggling to change himself by allowing himself space and time to develop his own solutions. It seems that whenever he’s in a tight situation, his immediate reaction is to forget about it by being in toxic relationships that occupy his mind rather than allow him to heal.

    The issue with using relationships as a way to avoid problems is that you get situations like what we see in “Less Than Zero”. In this song, we see the Weeknd singing about a woman who’s moved on from him and doesn’t think about him the same way she used to. We can see multiple references to help us assume that the relationship with this woman took a bad turn when he cheated on her with lines like “No, I can’t shake this feeling that crawls in my bed, I try to hide it, but I know you know me…”. It’s here that we see the damage the Weeknd deals to himself through his impulsive behavior to forget his trauma through other women, causing him to see his blissful moments be temporary and his surge of unhealthy emotions when those moments come to an end.

    Okay, so we’ve finally hit the conclusion to the album, and here’s where I’m going to finally share my interpretation of everything I’ve pushed till now. So, we reach this awesome outro with Jim Carrey reminding the audience that they’re tuning in to Dawn FM. He wants us to sit back and asks us questions of reflection to gauge our change in thinking. What did your highs look like in life? Were they natural or artificial? Did you ever feel like you were in synch in life or were you always a bystander to the flows of time? Carrey continues by saying that true healing occurs when you completely disassociate from the pain that lingers from bad memories. Once that occurs, you’ll be able to experience “heaven”, a place that people can reach when they’ve completely moved on from their past regrets.  But until you get to heaven, you’re going to be here, tuning in to Dawn FM. It’s hard to move on from a broken heart, but there’s beauty in the chaos that comes from that. It’s because of the heavy weight of a broken heart that allows you to build the ability to carry one, and it’s through having a broken heart that you learn how to fix one. The key is knowing when to work on yourself, and knowing when to unwind and relax, allowing yourself to “dance ‘til you find that divine boogaloo.”

    I thought this outro was awesome, and it’s up to this point that I crafted this theory that the Weeknd is also tuning in to Dawn FM just as we are. Remember the cover art? Well, that’s him at this point of time in the universe he’s created. He’s an old man, one with many regrets but with many hints of wisdom as well. He’s much older than the person he once was in After Hours, and it shows through both his appearance and this sprinkle of maturity that we see scattered throughout the album. These songs that we just went over and broke down? They’re all little memory fragments of relationships the Weeknd has experienced and still harbors a heavy heart towards them. As he’s listening to Dawn FM, he’s allowing himself to go back just like Quincy Jones once did and try to find closure in what he lost in his life. The music videos also help this theory as the video for “Gasoline” creates this weird dimension where a younger Weeknd meets his older self and starts beating him up. While it seems like the younger version is the protagonist of this video initially, it’s actually the older one that needs to be the focus to properly understand what’s happening. In the video, it’s the older version of the Weeknd going back into his thoughts and traumas and facing his reckless and toxic youth.

    Or maybe the Weeknd never had his opportunity to gain closure until he reaches death’s door. Remember the intro? Jim Carrey right away, “You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM, you’ve been in the dark for way too long it’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms.” Carrey as well as the whole concept of the radio station Dawn FM could actually all be a metaphor for passing on into the afterlife. Remember that weird radio snippet from “Every Angel is Terrifying” where they bring up this product ‘After Life’? That’s the ticket to heaven, having it be what everyone anticipates as something shocking and phenomenal yet mysterious and somehow out of reach. Finally, we reach this outro. While he does make more obvious references to the afterlife, this is where I figured that Jim Carrey’s voice is actually the voice of consciousness in this older version of the Weeknd. Think about it, if these are all memories and situations where the Weeknd is looking back, who would be able to narrate over that? Only he could, and that’s what this album is essentially. It’s the Weeknd going back in his life with a little more growth than before and tying up loose ends. While he does still seem hurt and incomplete, he shows a lot more resilience and composure than the man we saw in After Hours. This album is a bittersweet one because it shows the traumas that can come from being in unhealthy relationships and not taking the time to properly heal, but also shows the beauty in allowing one to understand themselves and creating silver linings to empty out their closet full of skeletons.

    Overall, I thought this album was really good. I’ll go ahead and give this an 8/10, and I hope you guys appreciated me going over song by song to craft these theories I came up with as I listened to the album. I have no idea if I’m close to being right or wrong towards what the correct interpretation for this album is, but hey, it makes sense to me. If you guys read this and came up with other theories, let me know. Until then, I’ll see you guys later when I look over another project. Take care!

Favorite Songs: Dawn FM, Gasoline, Take My Breath, Sacrifice, Out of Time, Is There Someone Else?, I Heard You're Married, Less Than Zero, Phantom Regret by Jim