Abel Tesfaye, more commonly known by his stage name The Weeknd, released his 5th studio album Dawn FM early last month. Dawn FM is the 2nd album in a trilogy of albums that began with Abel’s previous album After Hours. The album has been a success so far selling a total of 274,000 first week sales and debuting 2nd on Billboard’s top 200 albums chart. 

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself a huge fan of The Weeknd by any means, as After Hours was the first full project of his that I ever listened to. Despite that, I very much enjoyed both this project, as well as After Hours, and look forward to whatever the 3rd project in this trilogy will be. I first became hooked by the intro song Dawn FM which introduces a fictional radio station of the same name hosted by none other than Jim Carrey. This concept persists all throughout the album, but only occasionally makes itself clear and never feels like it’s disrupting the flow of the album.

The songs themselves are very enjoyable, with the first half of the album having some of my favorite songs of the year so far, as well as some of my favorite songs that The Weeknd has ever released. One of these tracks is “Out of Time”, a soulful song in which The Weeknd laments about a woman that he fell in love with who found another man before he was able to tell her how he feels. Like most of his songs, the vocals on this track can only be described as heavenly, and when coupled with the smooth 80’s style beat, makes for an emotionally powerful piece of music that gets stuck in your head for days.

Another song that I enjoy is the 3rd track on the album, “How Do I Make You Love Me?” This track, much like “Out of Time”, has an 80’s style instrumental but unlike “Out of Time”, this track has a more techno beat and is faster-paced than “Out of Time”. In the song itself, The Weeknd talks about a girl, asking her how he can make her love him. Abel’s vocals, as always, are incredible and really make you feel like you’ve been transported to the 1980s.

Overall the album is solid, but I will admit that the second half of the album is much less enjoyable than the first half which reduces my desire to listen to the entire album again as opposed to simply returning to the few songs that I did enjoy. With that being said, due to the premise of the album, the angelic vocals from Abel, and the meaningful lyrics, I still believe that this album is already in contention for album of the year.

Final Rating: 8.5/10