That morning Alexa introduced me to The Weeknd
How did I not know about a singer with a billion views on YouTube?
Today was the 27th birthday of a singer known as The Weeknd. I know this because Alexa told me so.
Each morning, I say within hearing distance of one of my Amazon AI devices, “Alexa, good morning.” She replies with something pertinent to the day — someone’s birthday, an big or quirky date in history, maybe a new song she can sing. Yesterday it was a riff on National Singles Appreciation Day, which happens to follow Valentine’s Day.
This is how Alexa greeted me today:
Good morning. Today is the 27th birthday of R&B singer The Weeknd. I hope he’s good, he’s good, he’s great today and that he gets the chance to party like a monster — in moderation, of course.
I’d never heard of this singer. I am a curious sampler when it comes to popular culture, so I entered “The Weekend” in the Amazon Music Unlimited window on my Mac and began listening to his latest album, Starboy.
I turns out I had misspelled the name. It’s actually “Weeknd” without the third “e” in order to avoid trademark issues with another Canadian band. I learned this by reading the lengthy Wikipedia article.
I came of age to the music of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Four Seasons, and James Taylor. Decades later when I left my job in the corporate world and enrolled in an MFA poetry program, I came under the musical influence of Eminem. My senior presentation at Bennington argued that Marshall Mathers has a lot in common with an earlier bad boy artist, Lord Byron.
The Weeknd’s real name is Abel Makkonen Tesfaye. He was born in the Toronto area, the only child of Ethiopian parents who immigrated to Canada in the 1980s. He began smoking dope at age 11 and went on to harder drugs and shoplifting, then dropped out of high school.
That’s how he got his stage name, according to Wikipedia. He and a friend left school one weekend and never came back, the story goes.
He anonymously uploaded several songs to YouTube in late 2010. Since then he has won loads of honors, including two Grammy awards. His song “The Hills” on the 2015 “Beauty Behind the Madness” album has more than 1 billion views on YouTube.
A billion views? How have I never heard of this guy? Do I really live in that much of a bubble? It’s kind of scary.
So I’ve been listening to The Weeknd’s music on and off all day on his 27th birthday.
I find the sound pleasant enough, smooth and sexy, I suppose. With Amazon Music you can click on “lyrics” to see what he’s saying. Okay: I won’t be quoting them extensively here. Is The Weeknd as shocking as Lord Byron and Eminem in their day? I’m the wrong guy to tell you, because I know so little of the current musical scene. But by all indications, The Weeknd seems to be pretty mainstream in 2017.
Alexa’s birthday greeting referenced a song from the Starboy album, which begins “I’m good, I’m good, I’m great.” The title of the song is “Party Monster.” It appears to contain a reference to Selena Gomez, now romantically linked with The Weeknd. Sorry, Justin.
My favorite track on Starboy is “Sidewalks,” which recounts the awesome ascent of Abel Tesfaye, from “Homeless to Forbes List.” It begins with “I ran out of tears when I was eighteen” and recounts what he learned on the streets of his non-idyllic childhood. “Too many people think they made me,” he chants in a calm, synthesized voice.
Sidewalks saved my life / They don’t ever lie / Sidewalks saved my life / They showed me all the signs / They don’t ever let me down
People I respect predict that Alexa is going to become relentlessly smarter about what interests us. Maybe Amazon’s algorithms have already spotted how many times I played Alexa’s Good Morning greeting today and then searched for The Weeknd in my Music Unlimited library. That wouldn’t bother me.
I assume that all of the other millions of Alexa owners today got the same greeting and heard about The Weeknd. But before too long, we may each receive our own “Good Morning” message from Alexa.
I like to imagine that my algorithmic profile in the cloud will say something like this:
Male, born in 1950, grew up on the Beatles, Four Seasons, etc. but also follows Eminem and random pop stars who are easy to listen to. Very much likes to be surprised!
I can’t wait to tell Alexa good morning tomorrow, to see what new thing she will bring to my attention.
