Followed by, more befitting of this guy, the Weeknd Night…
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[6.14]
Rodrigo Pasta: Max Martin working with Swedish House Mafia – not the first time this has happened, and not the first time it yields good results! “Sacrifice” is one of the few songs on dawn FM where Martin is fully behind the boards, and not just serving as an instrumentalist at the command of OPN. The result should be quite plain and predictable. It’s not! The drums have an airy sound that’s refreshing coming from both acts, and the scratchy lead guitar sounds excellent because of the notes that aren’t being played — the riff carries itself mostly by texture. And when SHM show up with their usual house keys, this time with a focus on vintage pianos and gleaming strings in the background, it’s only natural for this song to be excellent! So it’s interesting what they have the Weeknd do: restrict his voice, not in the mix but in his performance, guiding him to deep tones that carry the feeling of wanting to be remembered by the audience. Unfortunately, that backfires: the Weeknd’s vocal tone is what ends up being memorable, not the actual melodies. His ominous tone that leads to his usual nasal singing in the chorus feels enticing, but the main melody just follows the accentuation and chord progression of the instrumental, so the hook doesn’t land; it feels too tied up. To that extent, the main theme of the song (“I sacrifice your love for the night; I love my time”) doesn’t invite a deeper reading of what that entails, only different ways of saying the same thing. The Weeknd loves to suggest, but when it comes to telling a story contained in 3 minutes, he falls flat. He’s too chained to his overarching narrative.
[7]
Joshua Lu: A lot of Dawn FM falls into the same pitfall as this single: It’s well-crafted, has a clear aesthetic, and is delivered with hypnotizing charm, but it doesn’t reach the heights of his biggest hits. “Sacrifice” churns along strongly, but all of its parts sound too familiar, and its pace is too monotonous to truly inspire. Excellent radio fodder and not much more.
[6]
Al Varela: I feel like I say this every other single, but “Sacrifice” is the most Michael Jackson-esque song The Weeknd has ever made. I can trace exactly which Michael Jackson album and song it’s replicating; Thriller and more specifically “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”. This is a good thing! Abel has proven that he can capture the larger-than-life charisma that made Michael’s music so engaging, and “Sacrifice” is one of his tightest pop songs to date. Great wiry groove, big powerful synths, an infectious hook, little adlibs where The Weeknd improvises a little and gives the song its own little charm — it’s great!
[8]
Nortey Dowuona: The Weeknd, like every weird, metallic DeWalt sequence singer of the early 2010s, wound up making decent repeats of our parent’s dance music by the time the 2020s came rolling around. But unlike FKA twigs or Solange or Kelela or even Nao, he got to that point at the middle of the decade and made it the farthest. Unfortunately, he looks the worst for wear among them. He still sounds like a decent Michael Jackson impersonator and not the STARBOY. There are times (“Call Out My Name,” “Moonchild,” “I Feel It Coming,” “Tell Your Friends,” “Blinding Lights’) where his frail voice is imbued with a power that is either blinding, glimmering, piercing or shining bright. But most of the time he just sounds smaller and weaker compared to the swallow-voiced pederast who remade pop music as it still exists today in his very likeness. “Sacrifice” (which I keep wanting to become “I Want To Thank You,” and when it doesn’t I get mad) is well penned and sleekly fits into the Weeknd’s boxes. But it doesn’t blow those boxes up with the power or brightness of his voice, but instead lingers below the squelching guitar and slightly off-beat drums that never buoy the song into the stratosphere it’s trying to reach. Once the song ends, you’re left with a great deal of boredom and disappointment, wondering when the next Paris J*ckson album drops.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The huge distorted riff mitigates my irritation at Abel Tesfaye’s accent, more noxious than the one in “Gasoline,” which at least observes a tradition of non-Englishmen longing to be Phil Oakey. He and Swedish House Mafia have assembled an emo-loose-in-the-city ambience closer to Tobey Maguire in Spider Man 3 instead of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, i.e. who’s the goofball thinking he’ll get laid?
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: The Weeknd once likened his late-night lothario act to The Hills Have Eyes. With Dawn FM he’s on to The Fog, recasting himself as the narcotic voice of the last radio you hear. Once more the moment has been met precisely, in its Liminal Spaces Bot and songs-heard-in-empty-malls fascination. But what exactly has met it? Max Martin and Swedish House Mafia drop some juddering synths and piano chords that hype you up for something that never arrives. Abel intones hollowly like a choirboy who’s staking his whole reputation on staying on pitch, emotes like he’s suiting up for battle, and conjures up a grandstanding “life is worth living” narrative around the same old shit of being free to bang other people. This is past there being no there there; this is the Weeknd suggesting it’s unreasonable to expect any there at all. Yep, that’s the moment all right.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: Last year I worked through a majority of the summer at a liquor store while attending various appointments with psychiatrists and therapists. Living in the general area just outside of Philadelphia, I was greeted every day with a consistent marathon of 105.3 WDAS bombarding me. “Bombarding” not because it was painful to think you might get to hear Aaliyah or Stevie Wonder or Ralph Tresvant or whomever while you work; quite the contrary, that could often make the day much better. What made it worse was the tiring reality of how oppressive radio feels when you don’t have control over your life, your workplace or your listening. And believe me, it was certainly oppressive when the local hero turned notorious serial rapist called into the radio after being freed to sound like a exiled king. Alicia Myers’ “I Want To Thank You” was one of the better jams I’d love to hear and feel like my life was granted respite and reward during the more painful times of struggling to pry my life apart in a serene and conscientious way. Hearing that bit of it submerged in the sterile hellish sound of Weeknd’s “Sacrifice”, complete with Dawn FM’s conceptual nightmare provocations is… well, I get it, Abel. I really do somehow. On a brighter side though, I left that job, so I’m also glad that I don’t have to live in a life like that song for a little while yet.
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