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Published in synth-pop ·

The Weeknd

Blinding Lights

The Weeknd's Blinding Lights, written and produced with Max Martin and Oscar Holter, is a neon 1980s pastiche of racing drum machines and a chiming synth hook that became the most streamed song in Spotify's history.

By korczis 2 min read
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Review

Genre and Mood

The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” is synth-pop, electro-pop and new wave rebuilt for the 2020s: nostalgic in every sound it chooses, euphoric in its rush, and full of longing in what it says.

Song Summary

The lyric is about the importance of a partner and the need to see them at night. The Weeknd told Esquire that it is about driving to someone while intoxicated, blinded by streetlights, because you are so lonely, and called that its dark undertone. He wrote it with Max Martin, Oscar Holter, Belly and DaHeala, and produced it with Martin and Holter. It came out on 29 November 2019 on XO and Republic Records, the second single from his fourth album, After Hours.

Musical Breakdown

Intro

The song starts on a programmed beat that Billboard’s Frank DiGiacomo called a DeLorean back to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, with a synth line he compared to Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks” and A Flock of Seagulls.

Verses

Slate’s Chris Molanphy describes “scale-laddering verses”, melodies that climb step by step, as part of the “melodic math” Max Martin is known for. The pre-chorus names Las Vegas by its nickname, “Sin City”, cold and empty.

Chorus

The chorus is built on tension, with a crystalline synth hook, as Variety put it, and the “Hey, hey, hey” calls that DiGiacomo pictured listeners punching the air to.

The Video’s Slowdown

The official video has a passage of its own: the tempo drops for three and a half measures and the song moves into D Dorian, a change the album recording does not have.

Concepts in Focus

Almost every sound here is a synthesizer or a drum machine chosen to evoke the 1980s; Rolling Stone’s Kory Grow heard “fuzzy synths and hopscotching drum-machine line” and the best new wave song this side of Duran Duran.

The music video, directed by Anton Tammi and filmed over four nights in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, shows the Weeknd bloodied and speeding through an empty city. It also contains a tempo change, the slowdown described above, so the version you watch is not quite the version you stream.

Artistic Context

The Weeknd has said that 1980s acts such as Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cocteau Twins have shaped his sound since his first mixtape. Blinding Lights was first heard in a Mercedes-Benz commercial before its release.

Impact and Reception

Critics received it with near-universal acclaim. It topped the charts in more than 40 countries, spent 90 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, was named the chart’s best-performing song of all time in 2021, and became the most streamed song in Spotify’s history. Play it loud, at night, and you will hear why.

Learn from this track

Introductory

What you will learn

  • Name the 1980s sounds Blinding Lights borrows, from its drum machine to its synthesizer hook, and explain why critics heard it as pastiche.
  • Explain how a dreamy, euphoric surface can carry a darker lyric about loneliness and driving at night.
  • Notice how a music video can change the song itself, here with a slowdown that exists only in the video.

Listening guide

  1. the opening drumbeat The programmed beat Billboard's Frank DiGiacomo compared to Michael Jackson's Beat It, a time machine into the 1980s.
  2. the verses The scale-laddering melody that Slate's Chris Molanphy credits to Max Martin's melodic math.
  3. the chorus The chiming synth hook and the shouted 'Hey, hey, hey' answers over a tension-filled refrain about being blinded by the lights.
  4. the slowdown in the video A passage, heard only in the music video, where the tempo drops for three and a half measures and the song moves briefly into D Dorian.

Concepts in this track

music video

144 tracks

A short film made to accompany a song. Since MTV it has shaped how songs are remembered, and on YouTube it is often the main way a song is heard.

tempo change

3 tracks

A shift in a piece's speed, measured in beats per minute, partway through. In dance music the tempo usually stays fixed so DJs can mix tracks together, which makes a deliberate slowdown or speed-up a striking, emotional event.

drum machine

18 tracks

An electronic instrument that plays programmed drum patterns. Its machine-steady time and synthetic sounds became the foundation of hip-hop, house, techno and synth-pop.

synthesizer

66 tracks

An electronic instrument that generates sound from oscillators and shapes it with filters and envelopes. Synthesizers define the sound of electronic pop, house and techno.

Listen next, and why

Questions for discussion

  1. The Weeknd said the song is about driving to see someone at night, intoxicated and lonely. Does the euphoric sound hide that darkness or sharpen it?
  2. Why did a song built so openly on 1980s sounds speak to listeners in 2020, both those who remember the decade and those who do not?
  3. What does a slowdown that exists only in the video tell you about the difference between a record and its music video?

References

  1. Wikipedia. Blinding Lights. Encyclopedia
  2. YouTube (TheWeekndVEVO). The Weeknd - Blinding Lights (Official Video) (2020). Video
  3. MusicBrainz. Blinding Lights, recording. Database

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