My Dear Melancholy, is one of the most heartbreaking albums(EP) The Weeknd has produced. In this album, Abel showed all of his emotions, and he didn’t hide how he truly felt. My Dear Melancholy took The Weeknd back to square one.
This album was more personal than any other. The Weeknd produced it due to heartbreaks he had with two previous lovers, Selena Gomez, and Bella Hadid, but I’ll mainly refer to them as just one person, and I will not state their names. Diving into this album, we start with the most popular track on this extended play.
“Call Out My Name,” gets straight to the point on how Abel feels about the woman he once loved. Abel makes it clear that he wants his lover back and hopes that she wants him just as badly as he does. Abel states that he put her on top, yet she still leaves, but Abel wishes that she’ll call out his name. Hoping that the person you love to come back, hoping that they will want you back, it’s a painful feeling, and Abel expresses it heavily himself.
“I said I didn’t feel nothing, baby, but I lied. I almost cut a piece of myself for your life. Guess I was just another pit stop; ‘Til you made up your mind, you just wasted my time.”
Being left with nobody by your side, all the time and effort you put into them, and meant completely nothing to them.
Track 2 “Try Me,” is a seductive song, this track has a similar theme to Call Out My Name except instead of wanting love, he wants something sexual. We know that he wants this woman back and we’re hinted at the fact that she does want Abel back too, but she’s in a new relationship already. This woman keeps teasing Abel despite her new relationship and Abel is all in for it, he just wants her to make the final move, hence the name Try Me, so he knows that she’s fine with having an affair with him. At the end of the day, it doesn’t happen, and he believes that he just wasted his time.
Track 3 is called “Wasted Times,” this song has a dark tone and we’re able to figure out that he’s trying to fill the void with someone new, but he can’t because it just doesn’t feel the same. Abel is aware that this girl is in a new relationship, but he asks himself, “What does he have that I don’t?” By the end of the track pretends to brush it off and says that he has no business catching feelings, but deep down he knows that’s not true.
“Wake up. I don’t wanna wake up, I don’t wanna wake up if you ain’t laying next to me.”
In this next track, which is my personal favorite, we have Abel asking two questions; “What makes a grown man wanna cry? What makes him wanna take his life?” The answer he gives in the next lines tells us that the relationship he’s in isn’t even about love, but about the rush he gets from intercourse. This reflects the overall chorus.
“When it’s time, when it’s time when it’s time, it won’t matter, it won’t matter, it was like ‘I Was Never There‘.”
Abel is saying how she can easily move on and find someone else because he never meant that much to her. The Weeknd is aware of what love is and she isn’t that. She’s a poison, but he doesn’t care, he rather poison himself again and go back to his old ways until it’s dead, and it’s all because of her.
Abel can’t afford to let her hurt him again and that leads to the final track of the EP; “Privilege,” Abel is finally done playing games with her, he’s no longer holding on to her. Abel has finally let go and he doesn’t want to hear her say that she is suffering.
“And I don’t wanna hear that you are suffering. You are suffering no more. ‘Cause I held you down when you were suffering. You were suffering.”
Abel decides to go back to his ways so that he doesn’t have to love or get attached to anyone ever again. He believes that he’ll eventually get over his past lover by making himself go numb. He’s alone again.