Hurry Up Tomorrow was released on January 31, 2025. It marks a significant chapter in Abel Tesfaye, also known as The Weeknd.
Serving as the final album in a trilogy that began with the albums After Hours (2020) and continued with Dawn FM (2022), this album goes into themes of fame, identity, and the pursuit of transformation. The album feels raw, spiritual, and deeply personal—a true farewell to the persona he’s crafted over the years.
The album had 22 songs and is filled with many different genres, including R&B, synth-pop, and trap. It also explores Brazilian funk, like in the track “São Paulo”, hip-hop, and even operatic synths. The album has a total of eight other artists, which are Playboi Carti, Lana Del Rey, Anitta, Travis Scott, Future, Giorgio Moroder, Justice, and Florence + The Machine.
The songs are filled with different meanings, like addiction, fame, and the industry, heartbreak, and rebirth. Songs like “Hurry Up Tomorrow” and “Give Me Mercy” are on the topic of redemption and religion, he feels sorry for how he was in the past, which he’s asking God for forgiveness, and how he wants “heaven after life” and how he wants God to give him mercy and forgive his sins. With the lines, “Every time I lost my way, I lost my faith in you,” he speaks about how his faith was shaky; he easily fell into temptation.
Overall, the album was great. You go through what he’s feeling. I’ve been a fan of Abel for a very long time, and I feel like this album is one of his greatest because of the way he expresses how tiring fame can be and how it comes with its lows.
Accompanying the album is a film of the same name, which is directed by Trey Edward Shults. Starring The Weeknd, Jenna Ortega, and Barry Keoghan, it follows a fictional version of Abel as he spirals into an existential crisis after losing his voice. It feels surreal with haunting visuals. While some people found it narratively loose, I enjoy its dreamlike feeling and how well it echoed the album’s themes; it felt like a fever dream.
I really enjoyed both the album and the film. More than just some songs and a movie, Hurry Up Tomorrow feels like Abel’s way of saying goodbye to the persona he once called himself, The Weeknd. It feels like symbolic death and rebirth, as he prepares to move forward not as a character, but as himself: Abel.
