How The Weeknd Made the Biggest Hit of the Year by Standing Apart from the Mainstream

The Weeknd’s latest album, After Hours proved to be one of the few silver linings in the dark, grey cloud of the year 2020 for most music lovers. Although the album in its entirety was highly critically acclaimed, one song in particular went the extra mile to break multiple world records. Yes, I am talking about track num

ber 9, Blinding Lights. This record proved to be the biggest song of the year 2020, which was anyways loaded with numerous other big hits. The record spent 42 weeks in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 and 33 weeks in the top five, breaking the 62-year record for the longest time spent in the region over the chart’s history.

So, what makes Blinding Lights stand apart from other hits in the charts? Nowadays, most songwriters have started using a formula that has proved to deliver hits by making songs catchy, easy to listen to,

and replayable. This songwriting technique includes repetitive melodies and somewhat shallow, easy-to-understand lyrics. More often than not, songwriters also tend to start off with the chorus to make the song even more catchy at the first listen. However, Blinding Lights used no such tried and tested techniques, rather, it did quite the opposite. It gave listeners something they were not used to hearing, a retro, 80’s synthwave-inspired sound! Although the song can be called catchy, the writers didn’t go out of their way to make it repetitive.

The proven method for generating hits might succeed most of the times in making the song a commercially successful one, however, it is not able to make the song a memorable one that doesn’t fade away after a spending few days at the top. It was a bold and indeed a risky step for The Weeknd to release a song which was so different from the mainstream, but his decision to stand apart paid off and gave him something much more than just another temporary hit, it gave him a song that received praise from the legend Elton John himself, and most importantly, a song that people are likely to remember for a long, long time.