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The Weeknd · S5 E2
The Hills
A song about self-destruction that sounds like a panic attack set to music. It goes to number one
May 2015. Abel uploads a song to SoundCloud with no warning, no single announcement, and no radio campaign. Within 24 hours, "The Hills" is the most talked-about track in music, and it sounds like nothing anyone expected from the guy who just wrote a Fifty Shades ballad.
The Weeknd, The Hills (2015). Abel stumbles away from a car crash in the opening shot and spends the rest of the video walking through his own wreckage. The visuals are as distorted as the production: smeared, violent, and completely uninterested in making him look like a pop star. After "Earned It" suggested Abel might go soft, this video announced the opposite.
The Hills, The Weeknd (2015)
Produced by Illangelo and Mano, "The Hills" opens with Abel's vocal pitched down and buried in distortion, sounding less like a singer and more like a warning. The bass hits so hard it distorts on most speakers, which was intentional: Illangelo wanted the low end to feel physically threatening. Listen for how the beat never settles into a comfortable groove. It lurches and stutters, mimicking the disorientation of the lyrics, and the chorus arrives not as a release but as a confession shouted into a void.
The Anti-Single
"The Hills" broke every rule of what a hit single was supposed to sound like in 2015. No clean hook, no radio-friendly mix, no attempt to make the listener comfortable. Republic Records had spent a year positioning Abel as a crossover artist, and he responded by releasing the darkest, most abrasive song of his career. It went to number one.
The Hills: The Numbers
The Label's Dilemma
Republic Records had spent a year building Abel into a crossover act. "Earned It" was the proof of concept: elegant, cinematic, safe. When "The Hills" arrived, it forced a choice. Back the pop strategy, or trust the artist who had just given them a song that sounded like a threat.
TAP TO REVEAL: Why does the bass on "The Hills" sound broken?
Shameless, The Weeknd
"Shameless" is "The Hills" with the volume turned down and the honesty turned up. Where "The Hills" buries its confession in distortion, "Shameless" delivers it clean: Abel admitting he keeps coming back to someone who is bad for him and feeling nothing about it. The title says everything.
Shameless, The Weeknd (2015)
Abel at his most self-aware. He knows the pattern, names it out loud, and walks back into it with his eyes open. The lyrics read like a man arguing with his own conscience and losing on purpose.
How did Abel first release "The Hills" to the public?
"The Hills" has proven Abel can take the darkest song in the room to number one. But the next single will do the opposite: Max Martin builds him a pop song so bright it makes Michael Jackson comparisons unavoidable, and "Can't Feel My Face" will change Abel's career overnight.
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