R&B singer turned pop mega-star is back with a sequel to his 80s themed album After Hours, and this time it’s Dawn FM. On Instagram, The Weeknd seemed to hint at the prospect that these albums are part of a trilogy. Before turning towards pop, he released three mixtapes and combined them into a trilogy. The Weeknd’s success in the music industry is no joke, as he has 12.5 million album sales, and 83 million single sales. His smash hit “Blinding Lights” from his After Hours album has now amassed over 2.5 billion streams on Spotify alone and 545 million views on YouTube. He also has five #1 songs. 

On Dawn FM, The Weeknd takes you to another reality, and has Jim Carrey as a radio show host for “103.5 Dawn FM”. The Weeknd takes you to another decade as well, continuing the 80s theme from After Hours, but combines it with a singing style that reminds me of his 2016 album Starboy. The only way to describe the feeling of listening to this album is being on a dance floor that’s floating in space, and it’s awesome. The production is great, and as usual, The Weeknd brings his A-game to the vocal parts of it. Every single song is catchy. The chorus is always infectious and has you wishing you had a good voice to sing it at the top of your lungs. However, the features seem out of place. There are two main features on the album, from Tyler, The Creator, and Lil Wayne. The rap features on the songs surprised me on both occasions. While they didn’t completely ruin the songs, they just felt unnatural. Like they’re not supposed to be there. Overall though, the album was great. It was super consistent and the narrative that The Weeknd was trying to convey was clear, without using too many interludes. Due to the features that seemed out of place, I would give Dawn FM a 9.5/10.