The Weeknd is done with features, unless Daft Punk reunite
"Those guys are one of the reasons I make music," The Weeknd once said of the duo
Over the course of The Idol’s (hopefully) one and only season, The Weeknd definitively proved that he should never be acting with anyone, ever. What Abel Tesfaye—who recently hinted at dropping his stage name but hasn’t really followed this up with anything—has historically been good at is singing with other people. In yet another baffling career move, however, Tesfaye recently claimed that he was done with this too… with a caveat. That is, if he actually goes through with this pronouncement at all.
“And I just wanna say, this, this is gonna be the last feature I ever do, ever in my career, so I wanna perform it for you guys tonight,” the artist maybe formerly known as The Weeknd announced in his intro to an upcoming song called “Another One of Me” at a recent tour stop in Warsaw, Poland, according to Pitchfork. He did not say when the song or album would be released, or with whom he had collaborated.
But casual Abel fans who kind of want to dilute him with someone else can rest easy knowing there’s at least one—admittedly unlikely—way the singer will do a feature in the future. (Again, that’s if he actually goes through with this at all.) After the show, Tesfaye reposted the pronouncement on X with a new stipulation baked in: “the final feature… unless daft punk ever get back together.”
This isn’t totally random. The Weeknd worked with the iconic French duo on 2016's “I Feel It Coming”—a collaboration the three artists went on to perform at the Grammy Awards in 2017—and “Starboy.” In 2021, Tesfaye also told Variety that Daft Punk were “one of the reasons I make music,” so there’s clearly a lot of love there. Still, considering the fact that the DJs quite literally blew up their masked personas to announce their retirement, a revival doesn’t exactly seem likely. Whether Tesfaye understands this and is simply using the platform to once again shout out his love for the band, or he’s secretly looking for a way out of what he said live on stage is anyone’s guess.