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The Weeknd · S2 E1
The Upload
Three songs appear on YouTube from an account with no face, no bio, and no name anyone recognizes
December 2010. Someone uploads three songs to YouTube under the name xoxxxoooxo, and the voice is so haunting that thousands of strangers spend the next three months trying to figure out who it belongs to.
The Weeknd: The Morning (from House of Balloons, 2011). One of the original three tracks uploaded to YouTube by an anonymous account with no photo, no bio, and no label. Five minutes of atmosphere so thick it swallows you whole.
The Morning
Co-produced by Illangelo and Doc McKinney, "The Morning" opens with a chopped vocal sample floating over a sparse, hypnotic groove. Abel's voice multiplies across the stereo field, harmonizing with itself until it becomes impossible to tell how many singers are on the track. The production pulls from trip-hop, shoegaze, and '90s R&B simultaneously, creating something that had no genre name in 2010.
TAP TO REVEAL: Who actually built the sound behind those anonymous uploads?
“Abel would come in at midnight and we'd work until the sun came up. The lights were always off. He'd layer his vocals over and over until the room felt full of people.”
— Illangelo, Red Bull Music Academy, 2013
Parkdale, Toronto
The neighborhood on Toronto's west side where Abel and the XO crew were living during the creation of those first tracks. Cheap rent, all-night sessions, and a community of artists grinding in total obscurity.
Coming Down
The deep cut from House of Balloons that never became a single but captures the atmosphere of those first uploads better than almost anything else. Over a warped, looping guitar sample, Abel delivers one of his rawest vocal performances: intimate, unstable, completely uninterested in making you comfortable.
Which of these was NOT one of the three songs The Weeknd originally uploaded to YouTube in late 2010?
One of the three uploads, a slow-burn seduction called "What You Need," starts circulating faster than the others. Next: the song that turned anonymous listeners into obsessive believers.
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