The Weeknd (born Abel Tesfaye) told W Magazine in May, “I’m going through a cathartic path right now. It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close the Weeknd chapter. I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd. And I will. Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn.”
Shortly thereafter, he updated his display name across his social media accounts to “Abel Tesfaye,” but he’s kept @theweeknd as his handle. So, technically, the name-change has sort of already taken place.
But Tesfaye will have to keep The Weeknd alive at least until December, as The Weeknd’s ongoing (and seemingly never-ending) After Hours Til Dawn Tour still has to weave through Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Australia, and New Zealand. The grand finale, per his official website, will be on December 8 at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand.
Still, there are signs that The Weeknd is starting to fade to black. On August 9 in Poland, he performed an unreleased song called “Another One Of Me” and billed it as “the last feature I ever do, ever in my career.” On Wednesday, August 30, Diddy confirmed that “Another One Of Me” will appear on his forthcoming The Love Album: Off The Grid and also stated it is “The Weeknd’s last collab of his career.”
Yet again, however, Tesfaye stopped short of totally killing The Weeknd because, when posting his performance to X (formerly known as Twitter, speaking of name-changes), he wrote, “the final feature… unless Daft Punk ever get back together.”
When will Tesfaye permanently retire The Weeknd in favor of his birth name? Will he do that at all? In short, we do not know because it seems he does not totally know. What we do know is that his The Idol character, Tedros, has been killed, so to speak, as HBO canceled the series earlier this week after one very controversial season.
