The Weeknd Takes Radio to a New Level on ‘Dawn FM’

Last week, The Weeknd unveiled his latest release ‘Dawn FM’ - a concept album that explores a state of purgatory, through a fictitious radio station.

Throughout the album, The Weeknd’s pop tracks are broken up by a series of spoken intros, outros and monologues to reinforce the FM radio motif. In the album’s opener and title track, Dawn FM’s host - voiced by Jim Carrey - welcomes listeners to “walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms”. ‘A Tale By Quincy’ sees Quincy Jones deliver a touching monologue about his childhood, serving as the introduction to ‘Out Of Time’. That track is is finalised by a reminder that “there’s still more music to come before you’re completely engulfed in the blissful embrace of that little light you see in the distance”. Finally, on ‘Phantom Regret by Jim’, Carrey returns with the album’s closing monologue - “now that all future plans have been postponed” - a message that rings eerily true today. In reality, listeners aren’t quite navigating purgatory, they’re navigating through a pandemic.

The new release offers a continuation of the narrative of ‘After Hours’ - The Weeknd’s previous album released in March 2020. Dropping just after the COVID-19 pandemic first rattled the world, the album was preceded by four singles and a remix. It also saw The Weeknd make headlines as he introduced us to various versions of himself - beaten up, bandaged and then surgically enhanced- which he explained to be a commentary on the absurd culture of Hollywood.

This time around, The Weeknd kept things a little more mysterious - he only dropped one single from the ‘Dawn FM’ album in August of 2021, and kept fans on their toes with some subtle teasers over the following months.

Following the ‘After Hours’ release, 'Dawn FM' was initially teased as ‘The Dawn’, with The Weeknd mentioning the tentative title during various award shows and stating that “The Dawn is coming” across various social media posts. Eventually, on January 1st, The Weeknd teased his fans by sharing a text conversation with his creative director La Mar Taylor, in which he said “let’s just drop the whole thing”. Two days later, he told fans to “wake up at dawn tomorrow’. Two days later, he told fans to “wake up at dawn tomorrow’. The next day he finally announced that the album would be released on January 7th.

On the album’s release day, The Weeknd donned similar ageing makeup and prosthetics to those seen on the ‘Dawn FM’ cover art, as well as in the ‘Gasoline’ video, to host a live stream with Amazon Music. The livestream was shared via Twitch, and a selection of shots from the event can be found in the lyric videos for various tracks on the album. Following the ‘After Hours’ promotional tour being postponed, it was announced that it would be rebranded to the ‘After Hours til Dawn Stadium Tour’, to allow for the promotion of the 2022 album.

We’re only a week into the album’s release and it seems like there's more layers to be added to the ‘Dawn FM’ narrative, with The Weeknd unveiling (NSFW) music videos for ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Gasoline’ and releasing 'Dawn FM (Alternative World)' - an extended version of the release.

By intertwining retro radio themes and messages that ring maybe a little too true for listeners in 2022, The Weeknd’s ‘Dawn FM’ has gripped audiences worldwide in its first week. Of course, the quality of his critically acclaimed music hasn’t hurt either. With a pre-release campaign that’s comparatively low key to the efforts we saw for ‘After Hours’, The Weeknd’s still managed to make a splash. We wouldn’t be surprised if that creates a wave that he’ll continue to ride well into the new year.

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