Smash Cut to 2015, a completely alternate reality as far as the once pretty much unknown Mr. That spring, “High For This,” the record’s leading track, even managed to become the number one most played song on my “Nocturnal” iTunes playlist, a feat, I assure you. Yes, you read it here, I was once a true fan of The Weeknd, an advocate, even, showing the commercially unsuccessful record to my friends with little success, one comically if slightly patronizingly referring to it then as “Zenker’s preferred booty sweat jam.” I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. In fact, such darkness amidst the soulful and sensual yet modern House of Balloons is big part of what I liked so much about the record, what I continue to like about it years later, and what won me over, converting that high school senior from a mere listener to an impassioned a fan. More personally, it reminds me of an experience I had last year visiting some old friends in college who I had not seen for a while only to find, once sobering up after the initial bout of celebratory, reunited hard drinking, that their once good minds had been shattered by a crippling and shared addiction to Xanax, a drug which I hate with all of my being for what it has done to many I care about throughout my life, not to get too dark, old sport. Listening to the record years later, I still hear what I initially saw, a walk on a razor’s edge between, to borrow from F. Though the album’s contents were then unknown to me, the cover suggested, accurately, as it turns out, a sense of discomfort and even of danger, that something could go horribly wrong, that beauty and pleasure could turn to pain and suffering on a dime. Album art for The Weeknd’s 2011 mixtape “House of Balloons.”īefore even hearing a note, the record’s black and white cover, simultaneously modern and retro, featuring a naked woman with one visibly exposed breast in a bathtub, her face and body partially eclipsed by black and white balloons, well, it intrigued me.
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