The Weeknd

The Weeknd is a Toronto-bred R&B singer and producer whose sound moves between dark, synth-heavy pop and hazy bedroom soul, with detours into 80s-inflected funk and arena-scale balladry. His 2020 single "Blinding Lights" spent over a year on the Billboard Hot 100 and he now sits at 122 million Spotify followers, putting him in a very short list of artists at that scale. His recent After Hours Til Dawn stadium tour built each set around a continuous narrative arc, so the songs land differently in that context than they do on a playlist.