Table Of Content
Perhaps because he was making the darkest R&B imaginable, the anonymous approach worked better for him than it did for psych-pop bands, anthemic indie bands, chandelier-scraping belters, voiceless electronic musicians, and electronic musicians who probably should’ve remained voiceless. Like Tyler, The Creator, who perhaps not-so-coincidentally was blowing up around the same time, Tesfaye’s brash lyrics were very obviously a put-on, no matter how shocking or aspirational they got. The laundry list of drugs consumed in “House Of Balloons/Glass Table Girls” gives the preposterous smoothie from the “EARL” video a run for its money; the $7,000 glass table name-dropped in the same song was probably a little out of his price range at the time. “This was still a time when ‘enigmatic electronic producer’ was a phrase you’d find in every other track blurb,” Ian Cohen recently observed when looking back on Love Remains, an album by similarly “mysterious” artist How To Dress Well that was released five months prior to House Of Balloons.
Music Videos
Kiss Land did well for itself commercially, debuting at #2, but as far as hits go, this still wasn’t Pop Star Weeknd. House of Balloons was commercially released as part of the compilation album Trilogy (2012) and included the singles "Wicked Games" and "Twenty Eight", the latter of which is a bonus track. On its tenth anniversary, the original mixtape was released in digital formats, and included samples which failed to gain copyright clearance on Trilogy. The reissue was accompanied by a limited edition line of merchandise designed by architect Daniel Arsham.
Singles
Especially R&B, which is a genre that is heavily influenced by how the artist looks. The song "High for This" was featured in the promo for the final season of the HBO show Entourage in July 2011. On November 24, 2011, the Weeknd's first official music video, for his song "The Knowing," hit the Internet on his Vimeo page. The song was first released on House of Balloons and the video was directed by French filmmaker Mikael Colombu, who has also worked with American singer CeeLo Green.
The Bubble House
The tape has all of its predecessor’s haziness and very little of its punch. The two subsequent releases — the trilogy-capping Echoes Of Silence and lush 2013 debut album Kiss Land — also lack in areas that House Of Balloons triumphed, namely a consistent, impeccably-curated vibe. But looking back I’d call them the Weeknd’s most underrated material, victims of not sounding enough like the breakout tape.
House of Balloons is the debut mixtape by the Canadian singer-songwriter the Weeknd. It was released on March 21, 2011, by the artist's own record label XO. The mixtape was released for free on the Weeknd's website and was the subject of increased media discussion upon the use of its songs on television, as well as the then-anonymous identity of the individual behind the Weeknd. House of Balloons was entirely recorded in Toronto, with production handled primarily by the Weeknd, Doc McKinney, and Illangelo, alongside additional contributions from Cirkut, Jeremy Rose and Rainer.
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Other songs
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But while Ocean receded further and further into the shadows and released commercially unsuccessful, critically adored albums, the Weeknd improbably became one of the 2010s’ biggest success stories. For the omnivorous listener, hearing two disparate genres brush up against each other in ways you’d never previously imagined is a treat akin to watching Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenegger pal around in Twins. In December 2011, Metacritic determined that House of Balloons was the third best-reviewed project of the year.
The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Was The Right Kind Of Sweaty Chaos
I knew “Can’t Feel My Face” was a lock for the charts as soon as I heard it, and I’m no Hot 100 Nostradamus. It’s a loft where the walls kick like they’re six months pregnant, where women call cabs at dawn and forget their high-heeled shoes. The Internet buckled under the strain of demand when the Weeknd followed up their highly praised "What You Need" with a free full-length mixtape a few days ago. That clamor shouldn't have been surprising; this is music that feeds off elements drawn from R&B but uses them to crack open a world that skews away from that fundamental starting point. Like a lot of great pop acts, the Weeknd are shameless in their thievery, but they also have the savvy it takes to steal wholesale from other artists and come out the other side sounding like no one but themselves. The project, primarily produced by Illangelo and Doc McKinney, pushed the boundaries of R&B, with its influences of trip-hop, indie rock and dream pop and incorporations of electronic/urban genres.
Tesfaye’s path to success was unlikely, but easy to chart in increments. “The Hills” was even bigger than “Can’t Feel My Face,” 2016’s Starboy had yet another #1 with its title track, and last year’s “Blinding Lights” is one of the most successful singles of all time, recently becoming the first-ever song to spend a whole year in the Top 10 of the Hot 100. Tesfaye’s now big enough to play Super Bowls and raise a justifiable stink about a Grammys snub. No matter how smitten you were with “What You Need” the first time you heard it, there’s no way you could’ve predicted a fraction of these achievements.
Loft Music
Just over a month before House Of Balloons‘ release, Frank Ocean put out his own debut mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra. The parallels abound — recognizable samples of indie/alternative music, casual drug references, the creators’ commitment to remaining elusive and behind-the-scenes — but in the years since, Tesfaye and Ocean have been on opposite trajectories. Nostalgia-era Ocean, with his brighter music, Coldplay and MGMT samples, and slightly bigger media presence (whereas Tesfaye wouldn’t give his first interview until 2013, Ocean was on a Fader cover by the end of 2011), seemed much more primed for the spotlight than the more dour, less family-friendly Tesfaye.
Because of this, it is widely considered one of the most influential R&B projects in recent years. House of Balloons, along with Thursday and Echoes of Silence, was later remastered as the Trilogy album in 2012, with one extra song on each tape. The bonus track for this mixtape was his twenty-eighth song, “Twenty Eight”. There was a lot of that going on in the early 2010s — perhaps no more so than any other era, but all of it seemed to be getting attention. Death Grips made everyone forget that hip-hop had ever previously brushed shoulders with punk, noise, and metal — ditto for Sleigh Bells with regards to pop music.
House Of Balloons was the first installment of a mixtape trilogy, all of which arrived by the end of 2011. After working on his debut for years (and gifting a few cuts from its planned tracklist to Drake for his 2011 album, Take Care), the Weeknd rushed to release a follow-up. “There are lyrics on Thursday, I don’t even know what the fuck I said,” he quipped in that aforementioned 2013 interview.
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