The Weeknd

The Weeknd, stage name of Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (in Amharic: አበል መኮነን ተስፋዬ, 'äbäl Mäkonän Täsəfayē) is a singer, actor, songwriter, and Canadian producer, born February 16, 1990, in Toronto, Canada. On January 1, 2023, his single Blinding Lights became the most-streamed song of all time on Spotify, surpassing Ed Sheeran's Shape of You.

He began his music career in 2009 by anonymously publishing music on YouTube. He founded the XO label in 2011 and released his first mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence. He quickly gained success and recognition from several media outlets due to his dark contemporary R&B style and the element of mystery surrounding his identity.

In 2012, he signed a contract with Republic Records and re-released the mixtapes as the compilation album Trilogy. His debut studio album, Kiss Land, was released in 2013. His second album, Beauty Behind the Madness, released in 2015 and featuring the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles Can't Feel My Face and The Hills, won the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album. It was among the best-selling albums of the year. Starboy, the third album, achieved commercial success and also won the Best Urban Contemporary Album award at the Grammy Awards. His fourth album, After Hours, features several songs topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart, such as Heartless, Save Your Tears, and Blinding Lights; the latter single became the first song in history to spend more than a year in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, and as of April 2026 is the most-streamed song in the history of Spotify, with 5.3 billion streams worldwide.

The singer has won numerous awards and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. He holds several records on the charts, becoming the first artist with multiple songs in the same Billboard chart. In February 2015, Canada's Walk of Fame awarded him the Allan Slaight Prize. Elton John ranked him among the 100 most influential people of 2020 according to Time magazine.

He has a notable voice with a falsetto and tremolo. He influences artists in many contemporary music styles, including pop, hip-hop, and R&B.

In 2023 and 2025, he became the most-streamed artist on Spotify with over 100 million monthly streams, surpassing Bruno Mars.