Swedish hou— oh.
[Video]
[5.88]
Leah Isobel: Dude, leave her alone.
[3]
Ian Mathers: I did not expect one of pop music’s premier creeps doing a more overtly sinister EDM-pop version of the “but do you feel held by him?” thing from Midsommar to work for me at all and yet… it kind of does? Keeping the sonic focus pulled in so tight the whole time helps a lot, synths pounding back in like the tide as Abel keeps boring away at his target.
[7]
Alfred Soto: So long as producers keep The Weeknd as a fluting sound effect on a dance track, it’s easy to ignore his passive aggressive egotism.
[7]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A thrilling, menacing reminder of how The Weeknd still knows how to love you harder.
[7]
Katie Gill: Now that The Weeknd has made “dark sex jams” his musical bread and butter, this means that things like “Moth to a Flame” aren’t shocking anymore. It’s just The Weeknd doing another dark sex song. He’s done like five of these already. Time for an artfully shot music video, whoop-de-friggen-do. The addition of Swedish House Mafia could have made things sound a bit different than a b-side Weeknd track, but it doesn’t, just giving us more of the same instead. And even worse than there being nothing new here, there’s also nothing interesting here.
[3]
Andrew Karpan: Another dispatch from the Weeknd: the scene is gloomy! Where in earlier records, he requested subjects call out his name while he’s around, now he asks they make sure to call when he’s out of town as well. “Does he know you call me when he sleeps?” With the man not touring since headlining the Super Bowl last year, one is given to understand that he’s spent the last year fielding calls from anxious ticketholders in timezones around the world. (Well, I certainly like that more than calling them moths; one need not be so aggrandizing.) An attempt at airplay that wants to start out in the clubs, because it will give it a kind of authenticity. That’s something that, no doubt, felt lacking in anything from After Hours, a gloomshow that won radio the way Robert Smith once did: charismatic catchiness and makeup.
[6]
Nortey Dowuona: The loping synths keep falling over as the song begins, then get swept away by the Weeknd, his monstrous bass trailing his cape, his voice trembling but menacing, as he leaps atop each kick and blinding synth. He takes flight, drawing closer and closer as the drums and synths sizzle above the bass, then disappear before they can climb above it, the blackness becoming so inescapable… except for the stumbling synths, which fall over and pitch away from the Weeknd. The Weeknd backs towards the flames, burning him. He moans in agony but the bass swallows him, heals him.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: You could play “gross emotionally blackmailing man” bingo with this and lose win within three lines, but like some kind of thing in an overused metaphor, I’m sucked in by evil catchiness. That’s three Weeknd singles in a row I’ve liked, so I’m officially Part of the Problem.
[7]