The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’

31 January 2020

I live almost five miles away from Croke Park. Nonetheless, I caught the faint but familiar strains of ‘Blinding Lights’ in the night air from the first of The Weeknd’s back-to-back August 2026 shows there. It must have been some kind of echoing effect caused by a half-empty stadium.

I’m not sure The Weeknd would have filled two consecutive stadium gigs in Ireland even at the peak of his popularity, such as here in January 2020 while ‘Blinding Lights’ was top of the charts and filling the airwaves. Still, this was a huge hit at the time and, unlike a lot of other number ones, still gets the figurative spin on daytime radio. Even as I write this, I have the US Open tennis on TV in the background and right now between points the stadium sound system is playing ‘Blinding Lights’. (It’s an afternoon game between an Italian and a Brit, so that arena isn’t full either.)

Where previous chart-topper ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ was almost a Jackson homage, ‘Blinding Lights’ could almost be co-writer-producer Max Martin tipping his hat to his ’80s Scandi synth-pop predecessors A-ha: basic drum-machine beat; Bontempi-style keyboard hook. This may be my personal preferences showing, but I find it’s a better track than ‘Can’t Feel My Face’. The Weeknd, not the easiest person to like, delivers a strong vocal too: yearning in the verse, urgent in the pre-chorus, sweeping in the chorus. This might not be the best number one single of 2020 but it’s the one with the biggest classic-pop oomph.

While I’m feeling fair-minded towards The Weeknd for ‘Blinding Lights’, I should point out that shortly after ‘Blinding Lights’ tops the charts in 2020 there’ll be nobody filling any venues in Dublin or anywhere else.