“Out of Time” by The Weeknd ft. Tomoko Aran & Jim Carrey, Tuesday, December 5, 2023

 

Last year, I ranked The Weeknd’s Dawn FM as my fourth-best album of the year, right behind Underoath’s Voyeurist. While I’d probably re-rank the list and add a few albums I missed like Lizzy McAlpine’s five seconds flat, I still admire my fifth and fourth-placed records. Although I ranked The Weeknd and Underoath highly last year, I didn’t listen to either artist’s album very much for similar reasons. Voyeurist was a dark album dealing with drug addiction, suicide, and hopelessness. Unlike Underoath’s Christian albums, the darkness had the reprieve of light somewhere within a song or the album. However, the post-Christian Underoath offered an album so dark that I couldn’t listen to it, especially with some of the stuff that I was going through last year. Similarly, The Weeknd's Dawn FM was a beautifully crafted album, but it was too dark for me to enjoy for my mental state last year.

I REMEMBER WHEN I HELD YOU. On paper, Dawn FM should have been my album of the year last year. It’s a sequel to 2020’s After Hours, and both records work with the concept of a lonely addict who is chasing a high yet always feels empty, taking greater hits that bring him closer to the edge of his life. Dawn FM is a concept record about the end of life--a purgatory-like state in which the protagonist has overdosed and is awaiting his fate, though it seems there is still hope that he could be revived if someone finds him. As he awaits his fate, the protagonist is listening to Dawn FM, a light-rock station hosted by a soothing voice. The DJ is played by actor Jim Carrey, who is Abel Tesfaye’s real-life neighbor. The songs on Dawn FM are very good, but perhaps not as memorable as The Weeknd’s mega hits or the songs on the preceding album. Dawn FM’s format is sometimes New Wave sometimes disco-flavored R&B. Like “Blinding Lights,” The Weeknd and producer Max Martin make a believable late ‘80s/early ‘90s album on Dawn FM.

IF HE MESS UP JUST A LITTLE, BABY YOU KNOW MY LINE. It’s the subject matter that permeates through The Weeknd’s lyrics and is reinforced by the radio DJ (Jim Carrey), making Dawn FM an album that I don’t want to return to very often. Maybe it’s an album that feels better as a string of decontextualized singles because contextualized brings existential dread. But if we could just listen to today’s song, “Out of Time” without the reminder from the DJ that the protagonist is out of time and reminding us that our time too is running out, it’s a nice song that you could enjoy when shopping for groceries. That grocery-store flute sound comes from a sample from a 1983 Japanese song by Tomoko Aran, “Midnight Rider.” The music video for the song co-stars South Korean model/actress HoYeon Jung (정호연) best known for her breakthrough role on Squid Game. The video features Abel and HoYeon singing karaoke and was inspired by the Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation. It’s a nice song but as it ends, Jim Carrey reminds the protagonist that he is thirty minutes away from his fate, but warns the listener “Don’t you dare touch that dial.” It’s a radio trope that feels threatening given the atmosphere of the album. Hopefully, none of my readers are thirty minutes away from their destiny; however, we are all less than thirty days until the end of the year. We’re running out of time, yet we don’t know when that time is up. At least there’s good music along the way.

Read “Out of Time” by The Weeknd on Genius.