Diagnosing The Weeknd’s Fear of Death

As the leaves change colors, the lighthearted feelings of the summer turn sinister. Our society begins to celebrate the spooky, the shadows, and the supernatural. Amidst the myriad of Halloween creatures, stories, and traditions, the undertone of it all lies within our fragile mortality. 

A philosophy professor I had in my first year at Boston College once observed that people who love Halloween seem to be more uncomfortable with the idea of death. As the years went by, I came to find a similar correlation. The costumes, partying, and cartoonification of grave matters allow us to downplay the severity of the inevitable moment we reach the end of our time on earth. This phenomenon is explored at length in The Weeknd’s fifth studio album Dawn FM, where he explores the sobering reality of death. 

Before delving into this specific album, his previous album must be briefly mentioned first. His 2020 project After Hours, uses themes of escapism, addiction, and despair to weigh the pleasures of the flesh with the identity crisis the narrator faces. 

Although the album’s success was due to upbeat and comparatively positive songs “Blinding Lights” and “Save Your Tears,” the semi-autobiographical main character ends the album faithless and broken from the highs and lows of party culture.

In the last track “Until I Bleed Out,” he wails lyrics like, “I can’t explain why I’m terrified…I don’t want to touch the sky no more, I just want to feel the ground when I’m coming down…I just want it out of my life.” This dreary note is the transition point between the dark after-hours and the pending dawn ahead. 

Dawn FM cleverly extracts the nostalgic synths in its predecessor but places our pleasure-seeking protagonist in a different context. The youthful, Cheshire smile he wears on the previous album cover is now a blank expression on an elder’s face. 

The first two tracks stress his fear becoming actualized. Death makes the narrator “believe in make-beliefs,” even though he identifies himself as a nihilist who “believes there’s nothing after this.” Despite these lyrics clearly pointing to the old saying that there are no atheists in a foxhole, I believe this adds insight into a godless life and more specifically the initial premise regarding Halloween celebration. 

Ultimately, we have a natural tendency to preserve our lives. However, certain religions acknowledge that the earth is a mere stage in a long, sometimes even eternal journey, granting people a form of freedom in the way they live. 

Without this faith, there is nothing to place our life in besides what is in front of us. As The Weeknd points out, though, the illusion quickly fades when everything around us changes and eventually ends. The only solution is to make light of these implications to comfort the concerned, which occurs through the Radio program Dawn FM, a death-themed radio show with the cheesy jingles, ads, and host that old radio programs were known for. 

The songs in the album, meant to be the radio station’s playlist curated for our narrator to come to terms with his demons, is a purgatory/limbo allegory that is organized by routine asides from the host in outros of certain songs. 

After track 2, the album plays tracks mainly centered around love stories with death playing either a minor or completely nonexistent role. Although this perplexed me upon the initial listen, I believe this is meant to play into the radio station’s purpose as an aid in Purgatory. 

On the surface, this is meant to play into the idea of purgatory being a time to wash away the sins we committed on earth before reaching heaven. The story could have remained at this level, yet The Weeknd dives so much deeper into why he has an existential fear through the means of romance. 

In the spoken word track “A Tale By Quincy” and the following song “Out of Time,” The Weeknd shows the answer instead of merely telling it. The former features producer

Quincy Jones explains how his lack of parental guidance influences his treatment of women and his kids. 

The most striking line is “Growing up without [a mother] had long-lasting influence I didn’t fully understand until much later in life,” because it insinuates a deep regret for the life he lived up until this point. This moves into “Out of Time,” which gives a morbid take on the cliché of lamenting over a former lover.

Instead of asking her to return, he accepts the much tougher reality that it is too late. Any growth he has done will only benefit the next lover, not the one he is singing about. The phrase “out of time” obviously presents an angle applicable beyond relationships. The Weeknd explains in all the love ballads preceding and succeeding these two tracks the grave and intimate offenses he has committed against others for his benefit. 

The Weeknd lightly plays off his actions in the moments, but he looks back in despair, knowing that he ran out of time before truly changing his ways. This is his fear of death. His dread comes from a fear of judgment and damnation for his actions. He downplays death and damnation but the radio continues to shine a mirror in front of The Weeknd’s unapologetic mistreatment, making it impossible to maintain the facade. 

The album turns sour as the love ballads progressively get worse and worse in the subject, ending with a song I will not elaborate on, but will merely share its title “I Heard You’re Married,” and let readers fill in the blanks. 

The final song is called “Less Than Zero,” where the protagonist’s ego has finally been reduced to nothing. He regrets his actions, especially towards a specific woman who loved and believed in him. The song wearily ends with him saying, “I’ll always be less than zero, you tried your best with me, I know.” This was the realization needed for the radio station to finally reach its conclusion. The radio host first asks the protagonist to examine his conscience with guiding questions about his drug use and whether he held grudges. 

The host then addresses the fear of damnation uncovered in the album, which he diagnoses as “Phantom Regret.” He calls the main character a specter who is haunted by his own self. Due to this regret, he cannot attain Heaven in his state of life because, “You gotta be Heaven to see Heaven.” 

Obviously, this story does not fully align with Catholic teaching. The lines between Purgatory and Limbo are blurred, Heaven is never confirmed as a real place, and The Weeknd places far more emphasis on the feeling of regret than condemning any of the deviant acts he commits throughout the tracklist. 

Nonetheless, the observations it makes regarding the secular view of death are still very relevant. Many people do not believe in an afterlife because they simply do not want it to be real. We live in a world where there is very little accountability for mistreating others, so knowing there is eternal accountability would create dissonance in someone. 

Additionally, for someone who undermines views of Heaven, the idea of becoming Heaven remains an incredible image of the virtuous life. If we live our lives in a heavenly way through the way we love and act, then Heaven will be an easy transition given we have spent our life close to God. If we live our lives detached from God, hell also gives exactly what we want as that is as severed we can be from God whilst staying in existence. 

Thus, who should fear death? Well, it is the people in the exact mindset as the narrator of Dawn FM: those who deep down wanted to turn their life around, but never did because they never expected their hourglass to run out so quickly. The mercy of God has room for these regretful souls, but why waste a life like that? Why wait to die to experience what you truly seek? 

Heaven starts today for anybody who chooses to begin reflecting the attributes of the

saints. Heaven is realized when we place our minds and hearts fully in Heaven’s architect and king. So break free from the paralyzing fear that occurs in the darkness of the after-hours. Embrace the dawn of your heavenly tenure, which, when done fully, is a day with no sunset.