I find it hard to believe that The Weeknd is doing as many drugs as he claims. Nobody who does this many drugs needs to constantly reinforce it. He talks as much, if not more, than Kanye talks about Kanye. The first three tracks on his first album, Trilogy (a compilation of his three mixtapes), are “High for This,” “What You Need,” and “Glass Table Girls.”
In all fairness, “What You Need” is about sex being a drug, so partial credit there. But he more than makes up for that on the infectious “Glass Table Girls,” a song taking place sometime around 6:30am amongst clouds of cocaine, pills, and weed, all of which are mainly rolled or consumed on four foot long glass tables. Clearly, glass tables are the most inconspicuous means to get high.
“Mr. Weeknd,” Reporter A asks, “why is there a glass table in the middle of your hot tub?”
It only took until the ninth track for The Weeknd not to allude to or outright state that he is in fact using drugs in some shape or form. He’s like that stoner in high school who was always high just because he wanted people to know he was always high. He’s probably miserable on all these things, but to hell with how he’s feeling, he’s got a rep to maintain!
“Good morning fans of all ages,” I envision The Weeknd tweeting, “I’m doing drugs…again! :)” He pretty much says that in the aptly titled, “The Morning.”
His drug use was a bit more understated on his second album, Kiss Land. Though saying The Weeknd’s drug use references are understated means that he is stating that he is doing drugs, it just isn’t stated as often.
But very recently, there has been a new, more concerning, development in his life. If you haven’t heard, The Weeknd CAN’T FEEL HIS FACE. I know this because he just released a song called, “Can’t Feel My Face.”
Said track - which is a Michael Jackson-sounding pop tune (so yeah, it’s awesome) - is an ode to what appears to be his drug of choice: cocaine. (Other candidates included codeine and soda, oxycontin and ecstasy, “pills” of many variations, joints, blunts, ecstasy on its own, and soda on its own.)
The lyrics deviate from the upbeat sound, and he howls numerous cries for help, such as “I can’t feel my face,” (I think this is just to clarify to the listener that it is in fact he who is suffering from the title’s ailment), “the worst is yet to come,” “we both know we can’t go without it,” and obviously the most concerning, “and I know she’ll be the death of me, at least we’ll both be numb.”
The song is like a bizarro “Semi-Charmed Life,” so there may be a large percentage of people who just think it’s a really catchy, fun song!
We’ve all had friends who have gotten into one drug or another, and you let it slide for awhile as you hope they're just experimenting and growing up. But there’s always a breaking point when you need to intervene.
We’ve heard cries for help or an artist’s visions of his/her own death before, but it’s not as often that a mainstream artist states that I will die of [insert drug here] on a pop song. Maybe it’s an embellishment, maybe it sells, but it could also be a plea for someone somewhere to try to help this guy out.
I can’t imagine drug addiction is a good thing, and as Louis C.K. said, “Part of the reason people do drugs is because they can’t access their feelings, or there are certain feelings that are too much for them to access, so they do drugs to shut them down. When I was younger, before I did drugs, I wanted to do creative things, write and stuff like that. I had a lot I enjoyed about life, then it all became about getting high. It was so empty."
I at first thought it was comical that the first sentence of The Weeknd’s Wikipedia page spelled out the way to pronounce his name, but now after years of all this drug talk by him, it might soon be pronounced “the weakened.”
Here’s hoping his friends, family, and ultimately, his own choices can turn it around and start living for the other pronunciation decades in the future.
