“Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd

"Blinding Lights" was the second single from After Hours, the Weeknd's fourth album, and it tears off like a neon-lit throwback to the 1980s: synth-pop, new wave and synthwave welded into one breathless dance-pop sprint. He wrote it with Max Martin, Oscar Holter, Belly and DaHeala and produced it with Martin and Holter, the three of them splitting guitar, keyboards, bass and drums between them before Serban Ghenea mixed. Underneath the rush it's a song about needing someone, and needing to see them after dark.

It became his biggest single ever, a chart-topper in more than 40 countries, later named the Hot 100's best-performing song of all time. Anton Tammi's video, shot over four nights with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Joker and Casino as touchstones, has him speeding through a city after a beating from bouncers, and he played it at the Super Bowl LV halftime show.

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