Fresh off the heels of “Heartless” the Weeknd released a music video for “Blinding Lights” that continues the retro Las Vegas theme.
In the music video for “Blinding Lights, the Weeknd, aka Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, gets inebriated and drives recklessly around the Las Vegas strip. He appears to be taking multiple substances.
“I’m running out of time/ Cause I can see the sun light up the sky/ So I hit the road in overdrive, baby/ The city’s cold and empty/ No one’s around to judge me/ I can’t see clearly when you’re gone…” moans the Weeknd. Hopefully he does not wrap his convertible around a light pole.
The song is categorized as synthwave and electropop (synth pop) on the track’s Wikipedia page. And that was probably written by XO and Republic Records, or possibly the Weeknd’s PR agency, because it’s good publicity. But what is synthwave and why is the Weeknd super into it now?
Synthwave is a genre of electronic music influenced by the soundtrack to 80’s movies and video games. It is similar to cyberpunk but with music. Stranger Things (2016) is synthwave due to the soundtrack, which is a lot of synthesizers, or an electronic musical instrument, like a keyboard.
“Heartless” and “Blinding Lights” are the first singles from the Weeknd’s upcoming fifth studio length album Chapter V. The release date for the LP is scheduled tentatively as sometime in 2020.
Chapter V Track List:
- Blinding Lights
- Die For It
- Heartless
- Megatron
- Pure Life
- Patient
- For the First Time
- Save Your Tears
- Like Selena
- Let Me Go
Tesfaye posted an animation of a motorcycle on his official Instagram and it was so synthwave. He captioned the video with a random umbrella emoji, which might mean he thinks we’re lame.
Stream and/or download “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd from your legitimate music distributor of choice.