Dawn FM by The Weeknd

Dawn FM, the Weeknd's fifth studio album, came out on XO and Republic in early 2022 as the middle panel of a trilogy that opened with After Hours and would close with Hurry Up Tomorrow. Abel Tesfaye co-produced it with a stacked bench that runs from Max Martin and Oscar Holter to OPN, Swedish House Mafia and Calvin Harris, and he pitched the whole thing as a picture of purgatory. Jim Carrey narrates the trip, Quincy Jones and Josh Safdie get spoken turns of their own, and Tyler, the Creator and Lil Wayne drop in as guests.

For a record about limbo it's strangely buoyant: glossy synth-pop and dance-pop that raids '80s new wave, funk and club music, built to keep bodies moving while the lyrics drift toward the existential and the psychedelic. "Take My Breath", "Sacrifice", "Out of Time" and "Less than Zero" carried it out into the world, it debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, and critics swooned over the production and the melodies.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.