It is the Weeknd’s third consecutive album to top the chart for multiple weeks. Additionally, after the album’s first week of availability, all 14 songs charted on the US Billboard Hot 100, with ten of them in the top 40, led by “Blinding Lights” at number one, and “In Your Eyes” debuting the highest, at number 16. In 2025, the tour additionally supported his sixth studio album Hurry Up Tomorrow, which was released that year. He also announced that the tour would now be called the After Hours til Dawn Stadium Tour, as it also supports his fifth studio album Dawn FM (2022).
The title of the album was inspired by the 1985 movie of the same name by Martin Scorsese. An updated deluxe edition, containing three additional tracks, was released on March 30. A deluxe edition of the album, containing five remixes, was surprise released on March 23, 2020. On its release day, the album premiered on the eighth episode of the Weeknd’s Apple Music 1 radio show Memento Mori. On February 13, 2020, the Weeknd revealed the album’s title through a short teaser.
Industry awards
Both performances received positive reactions from critics and audiences, and were compared to those done by Michael Jackson and Prince in the past. On December 5, 2019, the Weeknd performed “Heartless” for the first time on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with “Blinding Lights” receiving its debut performance the following day on the daman game app same show. Following the remix with Ariana Grande, the song peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
- It is the Weeknd’s third consecutive album to top the chart for multiple weeks.
- It is also the first installment in a trilogy of albums, preceding Dawn FM (2022) and Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025).
- Speculation arose over whether the announcement of his then-upcoming Super Bowl performance, as well as the confusion as to whether he should be nominated as pop or R&B, contributed to the snubs in all the categories he was submitted to by his team.
- It also topped the Canadian Albums Chart of the Weeknd’s home country, generating 54,000 album-equivalent units, which marked the biggest first-week album sales of the year.
- “In Your Eyes” was released to rhythmic contemporary radio on March 24, 2020, as the album’s third single.
- “Blinding Lights” was released digitally on music stores and streaming services on November 29, 2019, as the album’s second single.
In 2021, After Hours was the tenth best selling album of the year in the United States, moved 1,281,000 album-equivalent units, including 99,000 pure copies. After Hours was the fourth best selling album of 2020 with 2.032 million album-equivalent units, including 480,000 pure copies in the US. It’s the first album to notch four consecutive weeks since Drake’s Scorpion (2018). Becoming the first album to lead for three consecutive weeks since Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding (2019).
The album’s creative direction was handled by the Weeknd’s creative director and childhood friend La Mar Taylor. The album’s overall art direction was primarily handled by the Tammi brothers, with its design being handled by Aleksi Tammi. The album also contains elements of electro, electro house, trap, drum and bass, liquid funk, and synth-rock.
Promotional singles and other songs
His music this year was excellent, and his contributions to the music community and broader world are worthy of everyone’s admiration. Speculation arose over whether the announcement of his then-upcoming Super Bowl performance, as well as the confusion as to whether he should be nominated as pop or R&B, contributed to the snubs in all the categories he was submitted to by his team. On December 6, 2022, After Hours was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for earning over three million album-equivalent units in the US. On March 19, 2020, After Hours broke the record for the most global pre-adds for an album in Apple Music history, with over 1.02 million users pre-adding the album to their libraries.note 1 It was the second most-streamed album of 2020 on Spotify.
Artwork and aesthetic
The album remained at number one on the Billboard 200 in its second week with 138,000 album-equivalent units, of which 47,000 were pure album sales. It is the Weeknd’s fourth number-one album, and marks the biggest first week sales of 2020 for an album at the time. After Hours debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 444,000 album-equivalent units, which included 275,000 pure album sales.
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 80, based on 20 reviews, indicating “generally favorable reviews”. Hamish Hamilton, the event’s annual director since 2010, returned to direct the performance. On November 12, 2020, the Weeknd announced that he would be performing during the Super Bowl LV halftime show. The tour was later postponed to 2021, then to 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(dated January 22, 2020) and features various snippets of the tracks from the album as he navigates a subway. It also became his first number-one single in Germany for ten weeks, United Kingdom for eight weeks, and Australia for eleven weeks, thus making it his biggest hit single to date. At the time of its release, it was the Weeknd’s first solo single since 2018’s “Call Out My Name” from the EP My Dear Melancholy (2018).
Singles
Tom Hull rated the album a B grade, finding it “remarkably consistent, at least until the closer drags its butt”. In less favourable reviews, David Smyth of Evening Standard particularly praised the track “Blinding Lights”, but found the Weeknd to be “in a bit of a fug” on the rest of After Hours. Aswad concluded that the album tests the balance “between innovation and commerciality as much as anyone today”. Writing for Variety, Jem Aswad branded After Hours the “most fully realized album” of the Weeknd’s career. He added that After Hours “feels like the first Weeknd album in a while to offer up a clear, singular vision rather than something frustratingly abstract”. In a rave review, The New York Times journalist Jon Caramanica complimented After Hours for its “sparkled trauma, kaleidoscopic emotional confusion, urgent and panting physical release paired with failed-state romantic dyspepsia”.
- A remix EP, featuring the deluxe edition’s remixes and an additional remix, was released on April 3.
- On February 19, he revealed the album’s artwork and release date, and released its title track as a promotional single.
- In the hours leading up to the release of “Heartless”, the Weeknd took to social media to tease the album’s era, posting “the fall starts tomorrow night” and “Tonight we start a new brain melting psychotic chapter! Let’s go!”
- On December 6, 2022, After Hours was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for earning over three million album-equivalent units in the US.
- At the time of its release, it was the Weeknd’s first solo single since 2018’s “Call Out My Name” from the EP My Dear Melancholy (2018).
- Following the remix with Ariana Grande, the song peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
After Hours (The Weeknd album)
On February 13, 2020, the Weeknd released a 48-second teaser that announced the album’s title. The song peaked at number one in 22 countries, including the United States and Canada, where it became the Weeknd’s fifth number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Canadian Hot 100 for four and seven weeks respectively. “Blinding Lights” was released digitally on music stores and streaming services on November 29, 2019, as the album’s second single. On November 27, 2019, the album’s lead single, “Heartless”, was released digitally on music stores and streaming services. In its third week, the album remained at number one on the Billboard 200 with 90,000 album-equivalent units (including 23,000 pure album sales).
Musicians
In the hours leading up to the release of “Heartless”, the Weeknd took to social media to tease the album’s era, posting “the fall starts tomorrow night” and “Tonight we start a new brain melting psychotic chapter! Let’s go!” After a five-month period of silence, the Weeknd revealed a snippet of the album’s second single “Blinding Lights” through a Mercedes-Benz commercial. The Weeknd first teased that he was working on a new album during a performance in November 2018, telling the crowd that “Chapter VI was coming soon”. The album opened with first-week sales of 444,000 album-equivalent units in the U.S. and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, marking the Weeknd’s fourth U.S. number-one album.
On November 24, 2020, he responded by calling the Grammys “corrupt” in social media posts, announcing the cancellation of his scheduled live performance at the ceremony. It achieved a total of six non-consecutive weeks atop the chart, the most by a Canadian artist since the Weeknd’s own Starboy, which led the chart for seven weeks in 2016–2017. It also topped the Canadian Albums Chart of the Weeknd’s home country, generating 54,000 album-equivalent units, which marked the biggest first-week album sales of the year. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart with over 26,000 units sold, making it the Weeknd’s second number one on the chart, five years after Beauty Behind the Madness.
The tour would have originally lasted throughout the latter half of 2020, beginning on June 11 and ending on November 12. On February 20, 2020, the Weeknd announced the After Hours Tour, set to span North America and Europe. The film is set shortly after the Weeknd’s performance of “Blinding Lights” on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
He characterized the album’s musical style as “ultra-cinematic keyboards, pulsating sub-bass, hard beats (which are seldom danceable), ’80s synthesizer flourishes and caverns of echo, all of which contrast with his high, angelic voice”. O’Connor further compared the album to the Weeknd’s previous releases, saying that After Hours “still delves into a sadboy persona but there’s a tinge of remorse that runs through, in comparison to the cold and often cruel tone of earlier cuts”. Writing for The Independent, Roisin O’Connor stated that the album eschews the danceability of its predecessor for “moody introspection”, and called it “the music you listen to when the party’s over”. The Guardian’s Michael Cragg praised the “sense of narrative cohesion” on the album, saying that its songs “bleed into each other”, with the Weeknd exploring new sonic influences. On October 18, 2021, the Weeknd announced that due to arena constraints, the start of tour would be pushed back to the summer of 2022 and would now be held entirely in stadiums. The promotional single reached the top 20 of various countries worldwide, including the United States, where it peaked at number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.
A self titled short film for the album was first teased on March 3, 2020, with its release occurring on March 4, 2020. Throughout 2020, various other performances of the album’s songs occurred during major televised events like the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, the 2020 Time 100 primetime event, the American Music Awards of 2020. “Save Your Tears” was released to contemporary hit radio in Europe as the album’s fourth single on August 9, 2020. “In Your Eyes” was released to rhythmic contemporary radio on March 24, 2020, as the album’s third single. The song was later sent to US rhythmic radio on February 25, 2020, as the album’s third single. The single peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and became the Weeknd’s fourth song to top the chart, with it also becoming Metro Boomin’s second chart topper that he produced.
A remix EP, featuring the deluxe edition’s remixes and an additional remix, was released on April 3. The Weeknd further teased the album on August 6, by tweeting “album mode full effect”. He continued to tease the project on January 12, 2019, by tweeting “no more daytime music”. The album received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for its production and cohesion; some critics named it the Weeknd’s best work. Internationally, it peaked at number one in 20 countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. The former two reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, with the latter’s remix with Grande also topping the chart.
Industry awards
His appearance during the performance on the show was inspired by the events that occurred within the aforementioned single’s music video, which was released shortly before his live performance. On October 22, 2020, a music video for the album’s second track “Too Late” was released. On July 22, 2020, a music video for the album’s fifth track “Snowchild” was released.
It is also the first installment in a trilogy of albums, preceding Dawn FM (2022) and Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025). Production was primarily handled by the Weeknd alongside a variety of producers, including DaHeala, Illangelo, Max Martin, Metro Boomin, and OPN, most of whom the Weeknd had worked with previously. The standard edition of the album contains no guest appearances, but the deluxe edition features Ariana Grande and the remixes edition features Chromatics and Lil Uzi Vert.
The album’s title is borrowed from the 1985 film of the same name, while its artwork and aesthetic was inspired by various other films. After Hours is the fourth studio album by the Canadian singer-songwriter the Weeknd. But as the only peer-voted music award, we will continue to recognize and celebrate excellence in music while shining a light on the many amazing artists that make up our global community.

