I’m not one to really care about positive messages in music. I don’t feel that art of any kind has a need to reinforce moral commandments or teach people about how to live their life. Art is certainly capable of doing it, but I don’t see it as essential. Plenty of brilliant music (and plenty of brilliant art, for that matter) has been made as an exploration of strongly negative images and ideas, some even portraying these immoral activities/characters in a neutral light, without any real judgment, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Of course, this is provided that the art in question has some kind of nuance or talent behind it. There’s a stark difference between the casual, virulent racism of the first half of American History X and the empty, shock-for-the-sake-of-it horror of Human Centipede. The first explores what’s going on from several angles, showing how such attitudes can be created, justified, and eventually broken down, while the second involves a mad scientist sewing mouths to asses for… science I suppose.
American History X is a clearly defensible example, mainly because it goes out of its way to critique the casual racism of its main character. It shows something virulent in order to examine and eradicate it, like a doctor finding a tumor in order to extract it. Things fall into a greyer area with movies like Requiem For A Dream. Critics, pundits, and even fans can work themselves into a tizzy trying to decide whether the closing scene of Marion’s degradation is a justified example of showing the horrors that people are reduced to performing in seek of a fix or simple pornography, and thus horrifying for other, more meta reasons. It’s a question of how we should see art: should Marion’s rape be seen in context of the narrative, or in context of the people making the scene? Is it a scene from a film or simple misogyny?
There’s no simple answer to this question, and I’m not going to pretend that I have an objectively correct one. I’d argue that the scene in question is built up to throughout the film by Marion’s use of sexual favors to acquire heroin, all at the urging of her boyfriend, and that it represents a logical endpoint. I’d also argue that the editing, music, and acting of the scene all make it abundantly clear that we’re supposed to view the party as hellish rather than erotic. On the other hand, others would argue that Marion’s use of sexual favors throughout the film are a result of the director’s misogyny, and his portrayal of the scene at the end is just a way for him to justify shooting the scene in the first place (I’m ignoring the fact that the movie is an adaptation for the sake of my point, by the way). In turn, I would argue that all that seems a bit of a stretch, and before too long the argument devolves into a shouting/slapping match. Nothing really gained there.
Such arguments are arguably even more prevalent in music, simply because there are fewer people involved in the work. With a film, there are often upwards of 20 or 30 people involved in planning, shooting, and editing any given scene, and blame thus tends to get a bit diluted and distorted. For example, with the aforementioned scene, should the writer be blamed, or the director? Or maybe the DP? How about the editor? The actors? The variations are endless.
With music, however, blame is much easier to allocate. Most songs have around two songwriters, and even the committee-born pop songs of the modern era rarely have more than six. As such, it is very easy to attack writers for any kind of perceived misogyny, racism, homophobia, glorification of violence, or urgings toward suicide that get picked up on.
So what does this have to do with The Weeknd? I’ve spend about 600 words discussing the portrayal of repugnant acts in music, and a lot of that is because it’s often the only criticism I find leveled at The Weeknd’s music (well, that and the slightly ridiculous name). It’s not surprising really; Tesfaye’s music is so well-crafted and well-sung that the biggest chink in his armor is the casually misogynistic lyrics. Parallels to similarly controversial artists like Eminem or Tyler, the Creator appear to abound.
I’ve mentioned The Weeknd before on this blog as the hangover to the never ending party that artists like Katy Perry sing about. Tesfaye’s songs are all about the consequences of the party animal lifestyle: depression, addiction, alienation, medical problems, and several other little nuggets of positivity are all over his music. How much of it is based on his own life is completely up to speculation, as the singer is extremely reclusive, and in many ways that makes things just a tiny bit worse.
Backtracking a bit, let me discuss what can be difficult to approach in this album. “Outside”, “XO”, and “Initiation” (especially the latter) are the darkest, most hellish songs on the album, and are thus the ones that, to me, are the least controversial. While the subject matter is horrifying (“Outside” and “XO” deal with psychological manipulation while “Initiation” deals with gang rape) the presentation of these subjects is similarly horrifying. “Initiation” in particular is what helps me believe that voice manipulation can be used to legitimately interesting effect, pushing Tesfaye’s voice from angelic to uncanny and inhuman. The context of these songs is forbidding and explicitly dark; I can’t interpret these songs as anything but Tesfaye documenting the kind of things that happen within the club universe with as much emotion as is appropriate.
I can defend all of the above easily, almost casually, as I have faith that Tesfaye isn’t defending or encouraging anything, but is instead simply discussing. His withholding of judgment can be attributed to the fact that, in these songs, he is the manipulator and rapist, which can be similarly defended from an artistic standpoint of making the songs more interesting. The music is forbidding, not inviting.
Less difficult to defend, and more onerous to people listening to The Weeknd closely, is the more casual misogyny present in the songs. This too can be attributable to the character Tesfaye is playing (much like Eminem, if he isn’t playing a character he should probably be locked up) but it’s so overwhelmingly prevalent that I find it more difficult to approach. On the one hand, any male characters in these songs that aren’t Tesfaye are seen out of the corner of the eye (the fellow rapists in “Initiation” and club goers that are alluded to). They’re basically little more than monsters ruled by urge and desire, and only Tesfaye is given anything approaching sympathy.
However, the female characters are arguably similar, and presented with enough depth to their lust that it becomes uncomfortable. While Tesfaye is stuck in perpetual horror at his own actions, the women are disposed before anything more can be said. The general state of a relationship in The Weeknd universe is a woman seducing a man, only to be manipulated and broken in the process, often by Tesfaye himself.
Is this equally dysfunctional? Some of Tesfaye’s songs seem to suggest that he's a hopeless, fundamentally broken romantic who is sick of women always trying to seduce him (“Same Old Song” and “Next”), while others reveal him with a girlfriend at home who recalls Fassbender’s character in Shame in his lack of control (“D.D” and “Wicked Games” from his first album, House Of Balloons). It appears that no one, at least for Tesfaye, is innocent, and everyone can be blamed.
With repetition, even the most wonderful of events is reduced to torture. This seems to be a growing theme in art, with the hedonism prescribed to us in youth revealed as something that leaves us alone in the day, with nothing more than a headache to keep us company. Life isn’t quite that bleak (not past high school anyway) but it isn’t as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as the charts would have us believe either. It’s quite easy to overdose on either.
In the end, the thing that truly separates The Weeknd from pop R&B is the presentation. Tesfaye’s voice is frequently compared to the late Michael Jackson, and he is a true exception in the modern state of R&B. Much like Adele, Tesfaye’s virtuosity allows him to express his emotions with astonishing clarity; unlike the Englishwoman, however, the emotions expressed by Tesfaye are more distant, partially clouded by digital manipulation and juxtaposed with almost entirely artificially produced music. With a different producer these albums could have easily been played on the radio, with the lyrics presented neutrally or even positively, if the producer was particularly skilled. It’s likely one of the reasons why lyrics have taken such a backseat to production; with the technology available today to producers almost any emotion can be presented purely through context. Before, calling forth emotion through sound alone required astonishing compositional or instrumental skill. Now it’s a relatively simple matter that can be achieved by one man with a keyboard. It’s atopic I’ll be returning to again next week.
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