Basically homeless at 19, then global stardom

Abel Tesfaye, who records as The Weeknd, spoke about one of the hardest periods of his life in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in January 2023. A Narcity report on the interview says he was 19 at the time and had dropped out of school.

Tesfaye described that time in blunt terms. He called it probably the darkest period of his life, said he was homeless, pretty much, and added that he did not know whether he would live to see the next day. The report does not name the city where this happened, and it does not say how long the period lasted or what ended it.

One memory from that time stands out in his account. He recalled somehow getting into a cinema to see Avatar, which came out in 2009, and said it was such an escape from his real life. The detail gives a small picture of how he got through a bleak stretch.

Years later, the story came around in a way he described as full circle. His song Blinding Lights became the most-streamed song on Spotify, with more than 3.3 billion listens, passing Ed Sheeran's Shape of You, according to Forbes. And when the filmmaker James Cameron looked for an artist to contribute a song to Avatar: The Way of Water, the sequel to the film he had once watched to escape, Tesfaye was the choice. He said that he was told there was one name on the list and it was his. The song received an Oscar nomination. He called the whole thing kismet and a full-circle moment.