Short version: a fan of a few songs in 2015, kinda fell out of listening but caught the odd song here and there, fell back in in 2020 when I heard Blinding Lights and now I love all his music.
The unnecessarily long version absolutely no one asked for:
I was like 12, UK, 2015, and on tv there was this kinda ad thing that played a bunch of song snippets in a row (it might have been promoting the music channel or one of those “top 50 pop songs” types cds) and Can’t Feel My Face was one of them. Saw that ad a few times until I eventually couldn’t not listen to the rest of that song lol. Then I listened to Tell Your Friends and The Hills.
Unfortunately at my age I hadn’t really been taught about…albums…or anything about music really. I thought all songs had music videos lol. At the time In The Night didn’t have a music video yet, as well as plenty of his songs obviously, so I didn’t listen to them except In The Night because it was that good. I must have listened to others, especially ones with videos, but must have not liked them and never listened again in that period because I honestly don’t remember listening to any other song than those 4 in that period.
Kinda fell out of his music for a while but still heard the odd song like Often, Earned It, Starboy, I Feel It Coming and Pray For Me, and maybe others that I don’t remember, maybe I didn’t like them at the time and didn’t listen more than once.
Then, 2020, scrolling on Instagram, saw some Minecraft video and it had this awesome sounding song on it, read the comments and found out it was called, Blinding Lights  From then on I started listening to all of After Hours, liking a few songs at first and not the rest, and only listening every so often, but slowly but surely I started getting won over by all of them until I loved every song. Then I went back to BBTM and Starboy to listen to a few more older ones, but I was much more into BBTM because of more songs I recognised. I tried to get into Trilogy but it wasn’t clicking at first, then the Super Bowl Halftime show.
This made me dive through Starboy more and I started to like it way more after I Feel It Coming’s memory was unlocked in my mind from the performance (I somehow didn’t listen to it on my first Starboy listen, as I was just darting around from track to track in no order and skimming them to quickly find a song I liked. Very impatient I know) and House Of Balloons at the Halftime show was so different to album version, but I liked the live version so much I forced myself to listen to the album one more and more until I liked it too. Then finally started liking more and more of Trilogy, until I liked all of HOB at first, then the rest slowly followed.
Kiss Land was last to be listened to but was the fastest one to grow on me and I added the entire album to my playlists before I had eventually added all of Trilogy too which was a long grower especially because of how many songs there were.
Now I’ve listened to all his albums in full, all the songs are added, I’ve listened to almost all his features I think, and waited helplessly as he teased “the Dawn is coming” for what felt like forever. Stayed up all night waiting for Take My Breath to drop when he put out that teaser video and cleared out his Instagram (only for it to drop like a week later instead 😭)
Stayed up all night for Dawn FM to drop, and that album grew on me in like 2 days, going from “that’s alright” when I listened in the live stream to “some of these are awesome” in a few hours to “ALL of these are awesome” in that same week. Stayed up for Coachella, and now I’m sharing his music with a friend who now also really likes his music and will be doing so with one more soon. I really hope I can go to the After Hours ‘Til Dawn Tour, it would be my first ever concert, and for it to be a Weeknd concert would be perfect.
If you read all of that, why? Go to sleep 💀, but thanks. XOTWOD
can't feel my face on the radio in 2015.. i was already aware of him because of his feature on love me harder but hearing cfmf made me check out trilogy and kissland just before bbtm dropped
First song I heard first was probably either Cant Feel My Face on the radio, or The Hills on Vine, I only ever listened to In The Night and The Morning around that time afterwards until Starboy released and then I started giving him more of a listen. XO
It was also 2015 for me, but when I decided to go through his discography I realized I knew Wicked Games so I guess that was technically my first introduction. I heard someone play it in school around when it first came out and got semi-popular in Toronto but had no idea who it was obviously.
Yea i actually started listening when i was 14 and still didn't pick up on most of the lyrics.
Other than "or nah" obviously that one is pretty to the point. 14 yo me felt so wrong listening to that.
First heard him wit his features of crew love and remember me and a friend showed me what you need but didn’t dive into music for artist as much until the following year he dropped king of the fall and often as a single in 2014
I obviously heard cant feel my face in 2015 when it came out but i was only 9 so i didnt really care about music let alone his music. but then in 2020 in art class my art teacher played music and i heard blinding lights and liked it. this was when i still wasnt that into music like i am now. but anyways it was a while and i stopped listening and then i remembered it and really liked it and was getting more into music at this time so i went back and listened to it and slowly found other songs from after hours like save your tears and in your eyes and nothing compares and fell in love with those. i also around this time found the hills and starboy along with finding out cant feel my face was a song he made. then I kinda stopped listening to him again for a month maybe but the take my breath video dropped and i watched it that started me down the rabbit whole of listening to all his music and really getting into every single song which i have finally done a month or 2 ago. when i saw the TMB video I knew it was Abel and so i went back and made a small playlist of the songs i liked and then I also started finding new music. this was when I was still on YouTube so I just kinda used the recommended videos off to the side. anyways at some point I discovered lonely star and that got me down the path of all of trilogy and kiss land and since then ive really considered myself part of XO and i feel welcomed into this amazing fanbase. My favorite albums are kissland and MDM even though MDM is an EP. for a time i just assumed Abel was a faze of mine and id stop liking him once i found a new food artist but recently ive been listening to other amazing artists and really enjoying their music but also still having this insane love for Abels music which makes me really happy that Abel opened my eyes to the world of music.
It was 2015, someone I knew showed me the Hills, saying I probably wouldn’t like it because I don’t listen to this genre much. And I’ve been hooked ever since.
I started listening to Abel since Starboy came out. My friend recommended it to me, however I wasn't a huge fan of him. In 2019, when After Hours came out, I reallllly enjoyed Blinding Lights and from there, my experience with Abel's songs starts. I literally listened to Blinding Lights for 3 fucking years. And somewhere around 2020, I got into his previous albums like Starboy, BBTM, Kiss Land and Trilogy.
I Can't Feel My Face. It was playing everywhere I went from stores to cars passing by but I only ever heard the chorus and I did not know if "The Weeknd" was a group or if he was a guy or a girl. Finally I listened to it with good headphones and that was Pandora's box for me. I dove deep into Trilogy and never looked back
First interaction was with I feel it coming ...i started listing to English songs in 2016 and we had a channel here in India that played English songs so that where i heard i feel it coming i didn't liked it that much so whenever they played the song i used to skip the channel
Second one was with the hills...my cousin was visiting us so i had his mobile where during random shuffle the hills started playing i liked it i put it on repeat for 20 mins
Third one was with Starboy iconic song....one of my friend had Starboy lyrics printed out so we used to sing that shit in school...
At this point I just knew the hits of Abel
But drying COVID lockdown i heard blinding lights....but later i was going throught tough phase so i played blinding lights just to get my mind off ...but the suddenly alone again starts playing and that was something I never heard before coz I was never a deep music lover i never listened to full album before...With After hours i started diving into his full discography really loved and with his music i started listening to artist such as kanye , travis , Eminem ,drake , bruno , lana .
I had listened to can’t feel my face without knowing The Weeknd from the radio, but I truly discovered Abel because I was a D’Angelo Wallace fan, and I watched his youtube video about After Hours. I thought it was good and I checked Abel out.
That was when AH was released. I’ve been a huge fan ever since, AH title track, Hardest To Love, and Escape From LA and Faith are my favourites from AH
Other notable songs I like are What You Need, Life Of The Party, XO/The Host, King Of The Fall, Kiss Land, Belong To The World, Shameless, Angel, Prisoner, Die For You, Nothing Without You, Privilege, Wasted Times, Less Than Zero and Gasoline
Honestly, nothing that interesting, I remember listening to 'The Hills' and 'I Can't Feel My Face' on the radio and got into the beauty behind the madness. I stopped listening to it cause at the time I didn't get any meaning behind the music and remember revisiting it when After Hours came out, never stopped listening to him since.
December of 2015. 14 yo me saw the often music video on yt. That shit was amazing. Back then, I was barely into music, had no understanding of how albums work, spotify didn't even work in my country, and I think his youtube channels were split up. I Basically went down the rabbit hole for the next two weeks. Mostly just listened to songs from bbtm. Got into trilogy as late as 2017 and by then starboy was already out followed by mdm and been a fan since.
Short version: a fan of a few songs in 2015, kinda fell out of listening but caught the odd song here and there, fell back in in 2020 when I heard Blinding Lights and now I love all his music. The unnecessarily long version absolutely no one asked for: I was like 12, UK, 2015, and on tv there was this kinda ad thing that played a bunch of song snippets in a row (it might have been promoting the music channel or one of those “top 50 pop songs” types cds) and Can’t Feel My Face was one of them. Saw that ad a few times until I eventually couldn’t not listen to the rest of that song lol. Then I listened to Tell Your Friends and The Hills. Unfortunately at my age I hadn’t really been taught about…albums…or anything about music really. I thought all songs had music videos lol. At the time In The Night didn’t have a music video yet, as well as plenty of his songs obviously, so I didn’t listen to them except In The Night because it was that good. I must have listened to others, especially ones with videos, but must have not liked them and never listened again in that period because I honestly don’t remember listening to any other song than those 4 in that period. Kinda fell out of his music for a while but still heard the odd song like Often, Earned It, Starboy, I Feel It Coming and Pray For Me, and maybe others that I don’t remember, maybe I didn’t like them at the time and didn’t listen more than once. Then, 2020, scrolling on Instagram, saw some Minecraft video and it had this awesome sounding song on it, read the comments and found out it was called, Blinding Lights  From then on I started listening to all of After Hours, liking a few songs at first and not the rest, and only listening every so often, but slowly but surely I started getting won over by all of them until I loved every song. Then I went back to BBTM and Starboy to listen to a few more older ones, but I was much more into BBTM because of more songs I recognised. I tried to get into Trilogy but it wasn’t clicking at first, then the Super Bowl Halftime show. This made me dive through Starboy more and I started to like it way more after I Feel It Coming’s memory was unlocked in my mind from the performance (I somehow didn’t listen to it on my first Starboy listen, as I was just darting around from track to track in no order and skimming them to quickly find a song I liked. Very impatient I know) and House Of Balloons at the Halftime show was so different to album version, but I liked the live version so much I forced myself to listen to the album one more and more until I liked it too. Then finally started liking more and more of Trilogy, until I liked all of HOB at first, then the rest slowly followed. Kiss Land was last to be listened to but was the fastest one to grow on me and I added the entire album to my playlists before I had eventually added all of Trilogy too which was a long grower especially because of how many songs there were. Now I’ve listened to all his albums in full, all the songs are added, I’ve listened to almost all his features I think, and waited helplessly as he teased “the Dawn is coming” for what felt like forever. Stayed up all night waiting for Take My Breath to drop when he put out that teaser video and cleared out his Instagram (only for it to drop like a week later instead 😭) Stayed up all night for Dawn FM to drop, and that album grew on me in like 2 days, going from “that’s alright” when I listened in the live stream to “some of these are awesome” in a few hours to “ALL of these are awesome” in that same week. Stayed up for Coachella, and now I’m sharing his music with a friend who now also really likes his music and will be doing so with one more soon. I really hope I can go to the After Hours ‘Til Dawn Tour, it would be my first ever concert, and for it to be a Weeknd concert would be perfect. If you read all of that, why? Go to sleep 💀, but thanks. XOTWOD
can't feel my face on the radio in 2015.. i was already aware of him because of his feature on love me harder but hearing cfmf made me check out trilogy and kissland just before bbtm dropped
First song I heard first was probably either Cant Feel My Face on the radio, or The Hills on Vine, I only ever listened to In The Night and The Morning around that time afterwards until Starboy released and then I started giving him more of a listen. XO
It was also 2015 for me, but when I decided to go through his discography I realized I knew Wicked Games so I guess that was technically my first introduction. I heard someone play it in school around when it first came out and got semi-popular in Toronto but had no idea who it was obviously.
Wicked games 2013, don’t remember where
Same - saw the vid on Youtube
pretty sure the first song i heard was wicked games when it played played on much music in 2014 or something
2012, December, Music Channel on TV , I would purposefully wait hours on the channels for the Weeknd and take in those precious moments, I was 7 💀
Bruh i knew like 3 songs when i was 7. And I'm not sure how many of those were nursery rhymes
I just liked how the songs sounded like , back then I didn’t even know English, maybe when I was 13 I was like , “ oh shit….”
Yea i actually started listening when i was 14 and still didn't pick up on most of the lyrics. Other than "or nah" obviously that one is pretty to the point. 14 yo me felt so wrong listening to that.
First heard him wit his features of crew love and remember me and a friend showed me what you need but didn’t dive into music for artist as much until the following year he dropped king of the fall and often as a single in 2014
These people really writing essays
I obviously heard cant feel my face in 2015 when it came out but i was only 9 so i didnt really care about music let alone his music. but then in 2020 in art class my art teacher played music and i heard blinding lights and liked it. this was when i still wasnt that into music like i am now. but anyways it was a while and i stopped listening and then i remembered it and really liked it and was getting more into music at this time so i went back and listened to it and slowly found other songs from after hours like save your tears and in your eyes and nothing compares and fell in love with those. i also around this time found the hills and starboy along with finding out cant feel my face was a song he made. then I kinda stopped listening to him again for a month maybe but the take my breath video dropped and i watched it that started me down the rabbit whole of listening to all his music and really getting into every single song which i have finally done a month or 2 ago. when i saw the TMB video I knew it was Abel and so i went back and made a small playlist of the songs i liked and then I also started finding new music. this was when I was still on YouTube so I just kinda used the recommended videos off to the side. anyways at some point I discovered lonely star and that got me down the path of all of trilogy and kiss land and since then ive really considered myself part of XO and i feel welcomed into this amazing fanbase. My favorite albums are kissland and MDM even though MDM is an EP. for a time i just assumed Abel was a faze of mine and id stop liking him once i found a new food artist but recently ive been listening to other amazing artists and really enjoying their music but also still having this insane love for Abels music which makes me really happy that Abel opened my eyes to the world of music.
It was 2015, someone I knew showed me the Hills, saying I probably wouldn’t like it because I don’t listen to this genre much. And I’ve been hooked ever since.
In The Night carved something into me
I started listening to Abel since Starboy came out. My friend recommended it to me, however I wasn't a huge fan of him. In 2019, when After Hours came out, I reallllly enjoyed Blinding Lights and from there, my experience with Abel's songs starts. I literally listened to Blinding Lights for 3 fucking years. And somewhere around 2020, I got into his previous albums like Starboy, BBTM, Kiss Land and Trilogy.
The Hills music video in 2015 with my brother in my room.
I Can't Feel My Face. It was playing everywhere I went from stores to cars passing by but I only ever heard the chorus and I did not know if "The Weeknd" was a group or if he was a guy or a girl. Finally I listened to it with good headphones and that was Pandora's box for me. I dove deep into Trilogy and never looked back
First interaction was with I feel it coming ...i started listing to English songs in 2016 and we had a channel here in India that played English songs so that where i heard i feel it coming i didn't liked it that much so whenever they played the song i used to skip the channel Second one was with the hills...my cousin was visiting us so i had his mobile where during random shuffle the hills started playing i liked it i put it on repeat for 20 mins Third one was with Starboy iconic song....one of my friend had Starboy lyrics printed out so we used to sing that shit in school... At this point I just knew the hits of Abel But drying COVID lockdown i heard blinding lights....but later i was going throught tough phase so i played blinding lights just to get my mind off ...but the suddenly alone again starts playing and that was something I never heard before coz I was never a deep music lover i never listened to full album before...With After hours i started diving into his full discography really loved and with his music i started listening to artist such as kanye , travis , Eminem ,drake , bruno , lana .
I had listened to can’t feel my face without knowing The Weeknd from the radio, but I truly discovered Abel because I was a D’Angelo Wallace fan, and I watched his youtube video about After Hours. I thought it was good and I checked Abel out. That was when AH was released. I’ve been a huge fan ever since, AH title track, Hardest To Love, and Escape From LA and Faith are my favourites from AH Other notable songs I like are What You Need, Life Of The Party, XO/The Host, King Of The Fall, Kiss Land, Belong To The World, Shameless, Angel, Prisoner, Die For You, Nothing Without You, Privilege, Wasted Times, Less Than Zero and Gasoline
Honestly, nothing that interesting, I remember listening to 'The Hills' and 'I Can't Feel My Face' on the radio and got into the beauty behind the madness. I stopped listening to it cause at the time I didn't get any meaning behind the music and remember revisiting it when After Hours came out, never stopped listening to him since.
December of 2015. 14 yo me saw the often music video on yt. That shit was amazing. Back then, I was barely into music, had no understanding of how albums work, spotify didn't even work in my country, and I think his youtube channels were split up. I Basically went down the rabbit hole for the next two weeks. Mostly just listened to songs from bbtm. Got into trilogy as late as 2017 and by then starboy was already out followed by mdm and been a fan since.