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The Weeknd · S5 E3
Can't Feel My Face
Max Martin, Michael Jackson comparisons, and the pop hit that made Abel unavoidable worldwide
June 2015, Moscone Center, San Francisco. Abel Tesfaye performs a new song at Apple's WWDC event, and by the time the first chorus lands, every phone in the room is recording. The Michael Jackson comparisons start before he leaves the stage.
The Weeknd, Can't Feel My Face (2015). The official video opens in a half-empty club where Abel performs to a disinterested crowd, and by the end he is literally on fire. It is the perfect visual metaphor for the song itself: a pop surface so bright it hides the fact that every lyric is about cocaine addiction.
Can't Feel My Face, The Weeknd (2015)
Max Martin and Ali Payami built the instrumental around a guitar funk riff and a four-on-the-floor kick that could have come from Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson. Abel's vocal sits right at the top of his range, delivering the melody with a clarity and confidence he had never shown on record before. Listen for the handclaps and the way the chorus explodes open: the production is engineered so that every element arrives at exactly the moment your brain expects a dopamine hit. The song is about numbness, but it is designed to make you feel everything.
The Michael Jackson Question
The comparisons were immediate and inescapable. The falsetto, the rhythmic delivery, the ability to make a dark lyric feel like a celebration. Abel had grown up studying Michael's catalog and had covered "Dirty Diana" on the Echoes of Silence mixtape. With "Can't Feel My Face," he stopped referencing Jackson and started occupying the same space.
“I want to make it very clear that I'm not trying to be Michael. He's everything to me, so you're going to hear it in my music.”
— Abel Tesfaye, Los Angeles Times, February 2016
TAP TO REVEAL: What is "Can't Feel My Face" actually about?
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Moscone Center
The San Francisco venue where Abel debuted "Can't Feel My Face" live in June 2015, performing it publicly for the first time at an Apple event to promote Apple Music's launch.
Real Life, The Weeknd
The opening track of Beauty Behind the Madness, and the sound of Abel acknowledging that everything is about to change. "Real Life" is quiet, almost hesitant, built on a gentle loop and a vocal that sounds like someone standing at the edge of something enormous. It is the last breath before "Can't Feel My Face" and "The Hills" turn him into one of the biggest artists on the planet.
Real Life, The Weeknd (2015)
Abel opens Beauty Behind the Madness by asking whether the person he is becoming is someone worth being. The lyrics carry the weight of a man who knows the anonymous era is over and is not sure what replaces it.
How many songwriters are credited on "Can't Feel My Face"?
"Can't Feel My Face" is number one, "The Hills" just finished six weeks at the top, and Abel has two of the biggest songs in the world at the same time. But there is a B-side the label is not sure about, a track so explicit they question whether to release it at all.
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