On Monday morning (2nd August) The Weeknd posted a snippet on social media called The Dawn Is Coming that you can see here.
The Weeknd teased the song with three days of hints – a wiped Instagram account followed by a new post and a song snippet – although new music had been expected for some time, especially since the long series of remixes, features and new songs that were released in the months following his 2020 blockbuster After Hours album.
Back in May the artist gave a characteristic, slightly enigmatic hint about what his next album will be like, saying, “If the last record is after hours of the night, then the dawn is coming.”
It’s also probably no accident that dawn was a favorite metaphor of one of the Weeknd’s biggest influences, Prince. It is referenced in dozens of his songs, perhaps most famously in the phrase “May U live 2 see the dawn,” which first appeared around the time of Purple Rain and popped up again multiple times over the following decades.
You can be sure that whenever The Weeknd’s next album appears we’ll be playing it on his dedicated Exclusive radio station