Dawn FM by The Weeknd | Album Review

The Canadian R&B superstar's fifth album explores mortality with a unique lens, along with some killer songs.

May 26, 2025

The Weeknd: Dawn FM Album Review | Pitchfork — Credit: XO, Republic Records

Just like fashion, musical tastes move in cycles. A style that goes out could very well come back in a couple decades down the road. Right now, the music industry is re-living its 80s heyday, with its luscious synths, fuzzy bass textures, and soaring choruses.

Abel Tesfaye, best known as The Weeknd, has undoubtedly been at the forefront of this wave. The smash success of his fourth record, 2020’s After Hours, almost single-handedly solidified the trend in the public eye. Retro-styled production from Swedish hit-maker extraordinaire Max Martin and American experimental artist OPN proved critical to what made the album such a commercial success.

Naturally, Martin and OPN are all over the 16 tracks of Dawn FM, Tesfaye’s fifth LP and the second in a new trilogy of albums started with After Hours. In addition to Martin and OPN, a number of guest producers collaborated on individual songs, including Swedish House Mafia, Calvin Harris, and Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys.

Dawn FM sees Tesfaye meld the racy and dark lyrical themes of his earlier works with this synthpop revival sound. Beyond that, there is a clear concept behind the album experience, which the titular intro track of the record makes clear. We find ourselves listening to 103.5 Dawn FM, the radio station in Purgatory, which Tesfaye visualizes as “being stuck in traffic waiting to reach the light at the end of the tunnel.” None other than Jim Carrey serves as our DJ, leading us to the afterlife:

You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM

You’ve been in the dark for way too long

It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms

Scared? Don’t worry

We’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through this painless transition.

From this point, songs seamlessly flow into each other, or use a radio-style music sting at their end. The transitional track “Every Angel Is Terrifying” even features a faux advertisement, and all of these little elements allow Dawn FM to truly feel like an experience, rather than a series of songs.

The first full length track, “Gasoline,” features a strong example of one of these transitions, coming out of the intro track. The saturated synth sounds give way to an expansive, minimalist soundscape, where Tesfaye’s voice is pitch shifted low, distorting him in an almost unrecognizable way. This processing pairs perfectly with the lyrics, which feature the hedonistic fusion of love and drugs that characterized his 2015 album Beauty Behind The Madness, alongside this new, almost macabre focus on his own mortality:

And I love it when you watch me sleep

You spin me ‘round so I can breathe

It’s only safe for you and me

I know you won’t let me OD

And if I finally die in peace

Just wrap my body in these sheets

And pour out the gasolinе.

Lead single “Take My Breath” also leans into the album’s overarching themes of existentialism and unresolved relationships. Granted, the treatment here comes off surface level, with mentions of being brought “close to Heaven” by a physical connection. The deep cut “Out Of Time” more strongly connects with the larger concept. Tesfaye describes not having the time to maintain a relationship, while invoking a double entendre referring to his eventual death:

Say I love you, girl, but I’m out of time

Say I’m there for you, but I’m out of time

Say that I’ll care for you, but I’m out of time

Said I’m too late to make you mine, out of time.

However, not every track adds to the album’s concept. “Here We Go… Again” focuses lyrically on protecting oneself from toxic relationships and finding a better state of being. While soaked in Tesfaye’s current 80s sound with a dreampop bend, the lack of cohesion lyrically with the rest of the album leaves it feeling like a leftover from After Hours. (That said, this song still became one of my favorites on the album, the melody of the chorus is just so beautifully written.)

“I Heard You’re Married” ended up being one of the worst offenders in this regard. The lyrics don’t go much further than the title implies. The song is just about being the “other man” to a married woman. There’s little attempt to make the words line up with the more cerebral idea behind the record, and Lil Wayne sounds out of place in almost every way.

But despite this conceptual spottiness, Dawn FM finishes strong with its closer, “Phantom Regret by Jim,” delivered again by Carrey. His poetry here ties up the record perfectly, and the fuzzy, almost supernatural synth waves wash over the audience, as though lifting us into the light, to the great beyond:

If pain’s living on when your body’s long gone

And your phantom regret hasn’t let it go yet

You may not have died in the way that you must

All specters are haunted by their own lack of trust

When you’re all out of time, there’s nothing but space

No hunting, no gathering, no nations, no race

And Heaven is closer than those tears on your face

When the purple rain falls, we’re all bathed in its grace

Heaven’s for those who let go of regret

And you have to wait here when you’re not all there yet.

Production: 8/10

Lyrics: 7/10