Top 131 Quotes & Sayings by The Weeknd

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian musician The Weeknd.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
The Weeknd

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, actor and record producer. Known for his sonic versatility and dark lyricism, his music explores escapism, romance, and melancholia, and is often inspired by personal experiences. He has received numerous accolades, including four Grammy Awards, 20 Billboard Music Awards, 17 Juno Awards, six American Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, and nominations for an Academy Award, a Latin Grammy Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.

For the chorus of 'Secrets,' we used The Romantics' 'Talking in Your Sleep' and 'Pale Shelter' by Tears for Fears. It's like hip-hop: just grab it.
To be recognized for the hard work my team and I put into 'Starboy' is an honor.
Environment is very important to me. Sometimes I have to perform during the day for festivals, and my music does not work in the daytime. It is nighttime music. — © The Weeknd
Environment is very important to me. Sometimes I have to perform during the day for festivals, and my music does not work in the daytime. It is nighttime music.
I think that's why my career is going to be so long: Because I haven't given people everything.
I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world - from religion to race.
My inspiration is R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Prince - for the vocals, anyway.
I want to produce the music to a movie that I'm working on, like what Prince did with 'Purple Rain.'
Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.
In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.
I feel like I'm the kind of guy that would have kids before getting married. The first thing would be kids.
We're all insecure, aren't we? I'm not walking around like I'm macho man or anything.
'Kiss Land' is like a horror movie.
'Kiss Land' is the story after 'Trilogy'; it's pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it's very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, 'Why Japan?' I simply tell them it's the furthest I've ever been from home. It really is a different planet.
I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it's such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it's therapeutic.
I'm a huge fan of R. Kelly's. He's a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine. — © The Weeknd
I'm a huge fan of R. Kelly's. He's a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.
Alternative R&B is in my soul. It's not going anywhere.
When you're traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I've met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.
Once you've changed who you are or who you've portrayed in your music, the fans, they'll catch it... Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.
Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word - and actually wanting to see you.
'House of Balloons' was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.
When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it's light, and sometimes it gets very dark.
Going to a therapist is not something you do when you're growing up as a street kid in Toronto.
When people meet me, they say that I'm really kind - contrary to a lot of my music.
I didn't like the way I looked in pictures - when I saw myself on a digital camera, I was like, 'Eesh.'
I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole 'enigmatic artist' thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.
The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you're in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life - you write about the mindset you're in at that moment.
I don't think I'd ever apologise for music I make, no.
Literally wrote 'Starboy' in 30 minutes.
Marriage is scary to me, man.
When I was performing the songs on 'Kiss Land,' it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There's maybe two choruses on all of 'Kiss Land.'
For me, bomber jackets are smart, but they are also street and have a lot of attitude.
When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.
I make good music for long journeys.
I knew the second I finished the first record - 'House Of Balloons' - and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.
People always say when they meet me that I'm not what they expect. I assume they think I'm this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.
I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.
Let's be honest. Canada wasn't ever cool.
'Eastern Promises' is great. — © The Weeknd
'Eastern Promises' is great.
I'm all about surprises. If you watch a horror movie, and it's called 'Kiss Land,' it's probably going to be the most terrifying thing you've ever seen in your life.
I've had sleep paralysis.
I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and 'Off the Wall' was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.
I didn't have a father figure in the house.
I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.
I'm all about evolution. I'm the first person to judge myself.
I'm trying to get to Mars before everyone else.
The Joker is my favorite villain of all time: You don't know his past; you just know what his plans are.
Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.
I usually don't like to 'spoon feed' my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.
'Thursday' is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.
I've grown accustomed to hotels and drastic climate change. — © The Weeknd
I've grown accustomed to hotels and drastic climate change.
I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.
'Trilogy' was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn't left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that's probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that's what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.
I just love Bowie. I think he's the ultimate inventor.
I don't believe in icons.
Me not finishing school - in my head, I still have this insecurity when I'm talking to someone educated.
I'm the most boring person to talk to.
I want to be remembered as iconic and different.
It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can't or won't see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.
My mother, my grandmother, my uncles would play Ethiopian artists like Aster Aweke and Mulatu Astatke all the time in the house.
The whole 'enigmatic artist' thing, I just ran with it.
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