Hurry Up Tomorrow
Hurry Up Tomorrow is the sixth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Abel Tesfaye, under his stage name the Weeknd. It was released through XO and Republic Records on January 31, 2025. It also serves as a companion piece to the film of the same name. The standard album contains guest appearances from Anitta, Justice, Travis Scott, Florence and the Machine, Future, Playboi Carti, Giorgio Moroder, and Lana Del Rey, with a bonus edition containing an additional appearance from Swedish House Mafia. Production was primarily handled by the Weeknd himself and his regular collaborators including Cirkut, DaHeala, Max Martin, Mike Dean, Metro Boomin, Prince85 and OPN, alongside various other producers.
Hurry Up Tomorrow is primarily a synth-pop and R&B album, while exploring a wide variety of genres such as Brazilian funk and hip-hop. The album is the final installment of a trilogy following the Weeknd's previous two studio albums, After Hours and Dawn FM. The Weeknd has hinted Hurry Up Tomorrow may be his final album under his stage name, and revealed that it was partly inspired by losing his voice while on tour in 2022. Hurry Up Tomorrow was supported by the singles "Timeless", "São Paulo", and "Cry for Me". To promote the album, a co-headlining extension of his tour with Playboi Carti kicked off in summer 2025 and is set to end in 2026.
Hurry Up Tomorrow opened with first-week sales of 490,500 album-equivalent units in the U.S. and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, marking the Weeknd's fifth number-one album on the chart. Internationally, it topped the charts in 16 countries, including in Canada, France, Norway, Belgium, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The album received positive reviews from critics, with praise for its production, lyrical content and vocal performances; some critics described Hurry Up Tomorrow as a "powerful finale" to the trilogy and alter ego of the Weeknd.
Background
On March 25, 2020, the Weeknd previewed five unreleased tracks during an Instagram livestream, some of which were reportedly intended for After Hours, which was released five days prior. Three songs—"Nothing Compares", "Missed You", and "Final Lullaby"—were later added as bonus tracks in the deluxe edition of the album. However, the other tracks, "Take Me Back to LA" and "The Abyss", did not appear on After Hours or its successor, Dawn FM.On January 10, 2022, three days after the release of Dawn FM, the Weeknd confirmed a follow-up album by tweeting: "I wonder... did you know you're experiencing a new trilogy?". This referenced his 2012 compilation album Trilogy, which contained remixes or remasters of the songs from his 2011 mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence. It also confirmed that After Hours and Dawn FM are part of a trilogy, which would be concluded with the sequel to the latter.
Development on Hurry Up Tomorrow reportedly began closely following the release of Dawn FM in 2022. In January 2023, the Weeknd confirmed recording sessions had taken place for the album, while also stating he has "definitely been inspired". On September 3, 2022, the intended final date of the North American leg of the After Hours til Dawn Tour, the Weeknd lost his voice during his performance at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood: the show was rescheduled to November 26 and an extra date was added for the following day. He would later attribute the incident to exhaustion resulting from scheduling conflicts between the After Hours til Dawn Tour and the TV series The Idol. The album was worked on up until release. In a January 2025 interview with Variety, the Weeknd revealed that "a good chunk" of the album was finished by September 2022, but his touring incident caused the album and its tie-in film to be "overhauled". The incident also influenced the Weeknd's decision to drop his stage name, potentially transitioning to making music under his real name, Abel Tesfaye:
Promotion
June 2023–May 2024: Early teasers and promotion
In June 2023, the Weeknd stated in a Variety interview: "I'm finishing the third part of this saga, of this trilogy. The name of it will come out soon." Recording therefore coincided with his musical and acting work for The Idol and the After Hours til Dawn Tour. The Weeknd continued to work on the album after this, sharing images of recording sessions between September 2023 and February 2024 at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles, alongside frequent collaborators Oneohtrix Point Never, Mike Dean and Metro Boomin, among others.On January 7, 2024, the second anniversary of Dawn FM, the Weeknd teased the upcoming album by posting the cover art for his previous two albums, along with a black slide featuring a white question mark in the centre. The slide was captioned with the number "3", indicating that the upcoming album would be the third in a trilogy. Later that month, he teased a possible collaboration with French electronic music duo Justice multiple times, who contributed to "Wake Me Up".
On February 9, 2024, the Weeknd shared a picture from a recording studio and a written-down text "Everything fades...". On his birthday, February 16, he teased the album by posting pictures of the Los Angeles Theatre with text on its marquee: "This Story Has Three Chapters—The Greatest Trilogy Known to Man." On February 23, in three separate messages, he tweeted "Everything Will Fade". In the weeks following this message, he deleted most of his posts on X.
On March 1, 2024, American record producer Mike Dean, a frequent collaborator of the Weeknd, celebrated his 59th birthday with a special concert at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. The Weeknd made a guest appearance, performing a reimagined version of "Take Me Back to LA", which he had previously teased on an Instagram livestream in March 2020. He also debuted a cover of "In Heaven", which originally featured in the 1977 film Eraserhead. American record producer Metro Boomin confirmed to be working on "a lot of stuff" for the upcoming album on May 22.
June–August 2024: Visual and conceptual teasers
A collaboration with American technological company Apple Inc. was teased on June 1, 2024, which was confirmed by the company nine days later for later that year. On June 16, the Weeknd shared a photo of a stop motion figure depicting himself as a baby. On July 2, he teased the first visuals from the upcoming album, displaying a person being half his current age self, half himself as a child, with the reflection of a flame in his eyes, and a sinister forest. This was followed three days later by more visuals, displaying an unrecognizable person wearing a cape, on top of stairs in a purple-lighted room, seen through the crack of a door. On July 7, he shared a quote from Abode in Heaven: Paul and Life After Death in 2 Corinthians 5:1–10: "Humanity in its present form is frail, deteriorating, and weak. To share in eternal life, however, our bodies must be transformed."In July and August 2024, the Weeknd shared a trio of CGI teasers, centred on a young boy, presumably representing a young Abel Tesfaye, alongside his characters from other albums, including Trilogy, After Hours, and Dawn FM.
- "There Are Three Chapters in this Tale", shared on July 18, which showcased the story of After Hours and Dawn FM, accompanied by various songs from these albums.
- "When you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you", shared on July 23, marked the resurfacing of "The Abyss", which he had previously teased on Instagram live in March 2020. The teaser's title is a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche.
- "Unprepared Certainty", shared on August 6, featured the first official teasing of "Wake Me Up" and "Runaway".
September–December 2024: Album announcement, singles and performances
The Weeknd announced and sold out a special one-night concert in São Paulo, Brazil, on September 7, 2024, featuring an elaborate stage design inspired by his Ethiopian heritage and religious themes. The show exclusively showcased songs from his trilogy, including nine unreleased tracks, with guest appearances by Anitta and Playboi Carti. The concert received positive reviews and introduced a new stage setup that was used for subsequent performances. The album title Hurry Up Tomorrow was officially announced on September 4, a few days before the show, through a video with a written story:Hours before the concert on September 7, the album cover was revealed, with album preorders on vinyl and CDs subsequently being opened through the XO webstore. Four alternative edition vinyl LPs were made available for pre-order between October and December 2024, each featuring exclusive artwork by one artist. The album's intended lead single "Dancing in the Flames" was released on September 13.
The Weeknd was announced as part of the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Festival lineup, marking his return since 2017. On September 21, he performed a 20-minute set in Las Vegas, featuring hits from After Hours and Dawn FM, along with "Dancing in the Flames" and the then-unreleased track "São Paulo" from Hurry Up Tomorrow. Six days later, the album's intended second single, "Timeless", featuring Playboi Carti, was released, followed by the intended third single, "São Paulo", featuring Anitta, on October 30.
The After Hours til Dawn Tour continued during the pre-release campaign with a leg in Australia, featuring two shows in both Melbourne and Sydney. During the Sydney concerts on October 22 and 23, the Weeknd performed a new song, "Open Hearts", which was later released exclusively on the Apple Vision Pro on November 14, and later released to streaming along with the rest of the album, on January 31, 2025.
On November 27, 2024, exactly five years after the new trilogy began with the release of After Hours' lead single "Heartless", the Weeknd announced January 24, 2025, as the album's original release date. He also revealed plans for a "one-night only" concert at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California, scheduled for the day after the album's release. The concert would feature "never-before-seen production" and a stage designed to cover the stadium's entire floor. On December 2, 2024, the show was sold out in under one hour, as over 300,000 fans attempted to buy tickets.
On December 17, 2024, the Weeknd performed at Spotify's first Billions Club Live, celebrating his record-breaking 25 songs with at least a billion streams, and performing "Timeless" and "São Paulo" from Hurry Up Tomorrow, and "In Heaven", with a concert film released on Spotify on January 7, 2025. During the show, he announced the upcoming album would be accompanied by a new tour and film in 2025. On December 20, the latter's release date of May 16, 2025, was announced. At the end of December 2024, billboards in major cities appeared, appearing to say "The Weeknd Is Near", with blank spaces in place of three letters, so they read "The End Is Near". In January 2025, during an interview for Variety, the artist reiterated that Hurry Up Tomorrow could be his final project under the pseudonym "the Weeknd".