Starboy is a song by The Weeknd featuring Daft Punk. It was released on 21 September 2016 and the music video was released on youtube on 28 September 2016.
This song solidified The Weeknd’s status as one of the greatest music artists ever. He was already huge with hits like ‘The Hills’ and ‘Can’t Feel My Face’, but when Starboy was released, The Weeknd rose to a whole new level.
Song Review and Meaning
There have been a lot of speculations regarding the song and I myself couldn’t analyse the music video accurately. The lyrics mainly talk about how he has become the center of attention in the world.
Who would’ve ever thought a near homeless person roaming the streets of Canada and shoplifting food to survive would ever reach stardom in the music industry, but The Weeknd proved us wrong.
The Weeknd is bragging about several things- the women he sleeps with, the material possessions that he has and the amount of money he is worth.
He is soaring so high that he can’t be bothered with shades that people throw at him. Ironically, though he also says that it is what made him a starboy. Perhaps people’s criticism of him motivated him to be one.
Meanwhile, he has enough drugs to kill any pain that he endures.
This song is my favorite song of all time. Its pure genius and everything about it is literally perfection.
The Weeknd flows incredibly smooth with his lyrics and in perfect harmony. The instrumental by Daft Punk is incredibly amazing. It really brings out emotions within you that are difficult to explain.
Coming to the music video, it starts off with a masked man killing Abel(The Weeknd). Later on, the masked man turns out to be Abel himself.
So, Abel simply killed himself. The Weeknd has been killing himself in a lot of other videos too- Tell Your Friends and False Alarm(the ones that I remember). Abel after killing himself can be seen wearing a cross.
Now, if you are among the people who are aware of what actually goes on behind the scenes you would know that Abel is not a devout Christian. I don’t want to go into the depth of it but there is ample proof that he is actually the opposite of that.
He even throws a subtle shade (P1 cleaner than your church shoes). He is somewhat mocking people going to the church.
So, The Weeknd is singing about he has reached phenomenal material success while showing off his car collection and the house that he stays in. The setting of the music video is pretty dark as it is with most Weeknd songs.
The Weeknd grabs a neon cross and starts breaking off possessions in his house. He lights his own wardrobe and sets it on fire. Then he walks off with a black cat which transforms into a black panther inside the P1.
Its kind of tough for a normal person to understand why he is breaking things in his own house and some people might say that it is to break free from the materialistic world and follow Jesus which is why he is wearing the cross.
But in my opinion, looking at the the things that have happened in the video and having a general understanding of the music industry – The Weeknd is definitely not following Christianity.
He even says ‘We don’t pray for love, we just pray for cars’. So, its weird to think that he is destroying some of his possessions while keeping the cars. The first thing he should’ve done was light his cars on fire in case he wanted to get rid of material possessions.
The video is quite strange and yet fascinating in a way. There are a lot of elements in the video that one can make directly head or tail of. Some people say that it has a supernatural vibe to it and has some occult message in it but it is hard to figure out what it is.
This is just my opinion on the track. Let me know in the comments what you think about the video.
