Idol is hot garbage. Will his stench continue on the Weeknd?

Nine months ago, The Weeknd used a celebrity to announce what could be a very short-lived career.

With the first of two sold-out concerts in September at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium – part of the world tour behind the blockbuster 2020 After Hours LP and its 2022 follow-up, Dawn FM – the pop-soul singer brought Lily-Rose Depp on stage. to film the iconic image of The Idol, the HBO comedy series that he teamed up with Euphoria’s Sam Levinson to create.

Idol at the time was all over the culture scene, and his buzz grew even more over the next few months, as Rolling Stone described the list of “disturbing” releases and his descent into “sexual torture”.

“When my wife read the story to me,” Levinson said of the Rolling Stone story after the show at May’s Cannes Film Festival, “I looked at her and I just said, ‘I think we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer'”.

In a way, Levinson was right — though perhaps not for the reasons he and the Weeknd expected.

The Idol, which stars the Weeknd (born Abel Tesfaye) as an LA club owner who slowly takes over the life of a troubled singer who sang a song with Depp, has been dominating social media discussions since the start of its five-episode season in June. 4.

According to research from Parrot Analytics, the audience demand for the show is 20 times higher than the average TV show, putting The Idol ahead of 99.5% of all shows in the United States.

However, almost all of the chatter has been criticizing, to say the least, strongly criticizing the show’s script, Tesfaye’s awkward performance and the fact that the producers seem unable to understand that the series is doing exactly the kind of violence it’s supposed to be. opposition. Also: The culture’s popularity has been a disappointment, suggesting that people are more interested in shipping a bad “Idol” than they are in watching it.

Because of what he did, it was easy to imagine the relief this week when the Weeknd, who is 33, wrote on “ONE MORE EPISODE” ahead of Sunday night’s finale, as if you could hear the word “ONLY” in his voice. (One music-biz insider, who was not named as others in the episode to speak freely, said HBO’s decision to break it down episode by episode instead of releasing the entire season at once “made it feel like a seven-minute TikTok. ‘slowly.”)

The question now that the show is ending is what, if any, impact it will have on the Weeknd’s career in music.

It is not surprising that he chose this moment to try to move to Hollywood. His song Blinding Lights is the most streamed song of all time on Spotify. After Hours spent four consecutive weeks at No 1.

He’ll be performing at halftime of the Super Bowl in 2021 and headlining Coachella in 2022. As a pop star, the Weeknd couldn’t have gotten older when he signed The Idol; if anything, Dawn FM’s lack of radio stations reflects the declining sales of its age.

Think about her around the same time Lady Gaga landed her role opposite Bradley Cooper in her 2018 film A Star Is Born.

Before the show started, he said that he was “planning to close the Weeknd’s head,” and that he wanted to start with his real name.

But where A Star Is Born brought Lady Gaga a critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for her acting — not to mention one of her biggest hits in the movie Shallow — The Idol has made the Weeknd the subject of countless jokes about his painful reading and music. funny faces like Tedros.

The series, which is a well-known writer, is built on the misconception that Depp’s character – a white-clad singer named Jocelyn – is the type that the composer would still pour money into.

As digital broadcasting has declined with the power of established music gatekeepers, record labels have learned that hits can be made (or acquired) much more cheaply than in the days of flashy videos and glossy magazine covers; #MeToo also reduced the number of stars who were targeted by former men.

This is not to say, of course, that women’s bodies don’t make money in today’s pop culture. But consider that the closest thing to the real world of Jocelyn hitting this year is Miley Cyrus’s Flowers, which clearly rejects the idea of ​​relying on one’s validation.

Or take the proliferation of K-pop girl groups, whose sex acts have a very different vibe — slay queen-dominant, less submissive — than that of Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera.

As seen in Tedros’ tortured conversation with Jocelyn about his relationship with his mother who abuses him, “The Idol” also clings to the old idea that suffering is needed to create great art – an idea that is inconsistent with the time when ideas appear. health has become a popular marketing concept.

To be fair to The Idol, A Star Is Born drew a fine line between pain and authenticity. In the cathartic Shallow, however, Lady Gaga was able to sell that illusion, while the Weeknd’s songs from The Idol – none of which are in the Top 50 viewed by Spotify – served as an exercise.

The only standout is Jocelyn’s would-be solo comeback, World Class Sinner / I’m a Freak, a well-crafted take on the bad-girl scene where Depp tells her would-be lover, “Get down ready to be my whore.” (Fun!)

However, in the world of the show, Tedros does not know what is good about World Class Sinner, which raises a real problem with The Idol: How are we supposed to separate Tedros, a sadist with a strange collar at the ready, from the Weeknd, a talented singer who shares a dark vision?

With his ugly appearance, his drug habit and his taste for aggressive sex, this character is based on the experiences of the singer as in songs like The Hills and Can’t Feel My Face; Part of the reason Tedros was written about so much is because Levinson and Tesfaye no doubt thought that viewers, after listening to the Weeknd for years, had their fill.

But for all the filth in his music, the Weeknd has maintained a good demeanor (and an ear for strings) that keeps you on his side. Tedros, on the other hand, is bad – Tesfaye alone doesn’t have enough talent as an actor to showcase his talent.

He and Levinson seem to want to criticize the music industry’s abuse of young women; at times, The Idol shows a glimmer of self-awareness, as in the recording studio where writer Mike Dean (playing himself) raises an eyebrow as Tedros examines Jocelyn as she records the lyrics for a new song.

Yet the show is so sloppy in its treatment of Depp’s naked body that there’s no difference between it and what’s funny.

Indeed, the brain reading of The Idol star may be that Tesfaye and Levinson have successfully demonstrated that cheating is alive and well in the record biz – at an unexpected cost to their reputations.

Few in the business seem to think the damage will be permanent for the Weeknd. “Give them bangers like they do and keep going” – they’re on the road playing stadiums in Europe as we speak – “and people will remember fruit flies,” said one executive.

A famous songwriter said that breaking new stars is so difficult in today’s market that “the old ones are like bullets.” “Fire any Vanity Fair article” where the Weeknd appeared to be promoting The Idol, one executive said, and it would be fine.

Then, after giving his bare-bones appearance on the show, a source responded that he spoke to a girl who told her the Weeknd was “crazy” towards her and her friends. ‘to see.

You have to wonder if Tedros’ brutality will make it difficult to take the Week seriously when he returns with his next batch of haunted boudoir jams. (Some of his conversations have already become unkind memes on the Internet.)

Ditto his constant attempts on social media to make sure the show is a success despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary – which was at odds with the mystique he had carefully cultivated in his early years.

Maybe five episodes of a poorly chosen TV show isn’t enough to ruin that image. But if the Weeknd can’t sing about having horns in the shade, what other options does he have?