Wiki
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Release Date
June 2020
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Length
4 tracks
"Blinding Lights" is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter the Weeknd. It was released on November 29, 2019, through XO and Republic Records, as the second single from his fourth studio album After Hours (2020). The song was written alongside Swedish musicians Max Martin and Oscar Holter, who produced it with the Weeknd, and fellow Canadian musicians Belly and DaHeala.
"Blinding Lights" received universal acclaim from critics. and became the best-selling global single of 2020, earning 2.72 billion subscription stream equivalents globally, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), making it the Weeknd's most successful single worldwide to date. On Spotify, it surpassed Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" to become the most streamed song of all time, and has since become the first song to surpass four billion streams in history. "Blinding Lights" has three official remixes: one by American electronic band Chromatics, one by Jamaican-American electronic dance music group Major Lazer, and one featuring Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalía.
The music video for "Blinding Lights" was directed by Anton Tammi, assisted by Kenneth Taylor, and filmed in Fremont Street, Las Vegas and Downtown Los Angeles, during a four-day shooting that took place until 6 AM every day. The video follows the After Hours videos sequence, starting where the "Heartless" premise ended, and presents the Weeknd as a lonely and psychotic guy walking and driving with no destination around the streets in Las Vegas, and a passing resemblance to jazz musician Herbie Hancock, circa 1978's Sunlight. The singer sports the same garb as the previous video, adopted for the album promotion, with a red suit, specific hairstyle, mustache and sunglasses. The visual opens with the Weeknd laughing as blood drips down his face, then jumps back in time to show the mayhem that led to his gruesome end — the pop star speeding around a deserted city, dancing gleefully in the streets. The visual follows the events of the music video for "Heartless" and sees the Weeknd go on a hallucinated joyride after waking from a trance. It concludes with the Weeknd having flashbacks to a club he attended earlier in the night, where he was serenaded by a mysterious woman, played by Japanese actress Miki Hamano and beat up by a duo of bouncers, uncredited, who had forced him to go on the run. The video depicts the singer amid a story inspired by the films Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Joker, and Casino.
"Blinding Lights" was named as the second best song of 2020 by Billboard and the best song of 2020 by Consequence of Sound; the former highlighted its nostalgic appeal, and the latter praised its "melodic romance waxed over a blockbuster riff". Variety magazine named "Blinding Lights" the Record of the Year: "The Weeknd's 'Blinding Lights' is indisputably one of the landmark songs of 2020. The piece has a crystalline synth hook straight out of 1985. The record has come to symbolize strength and triumphing over adversity." "Blinding Lights" was named one of the best songs of 2019 by Stereogum, where editor Chris DeVille complimented the song's '80s aesthetic and vibe, saying that "the '80s will never die—or, at least, the glamorous neon '80s of our collective imagination".
Rolling Stone columnist Kory Grow named "Blinding Lights" as the fourth best song of 2020: "With fuzzy synths and hopscotching drum-machine line, 'Blinding Lights' is the best new wave song this side of Duran Duran. In just three minutes, the Weeknd checks off any number of Eighties pop-song signposts—unanswered phone calls, driving fast just to feel something, lights representing loneliness—but the real magic is how his voice and the song's chiming keyboard line lingers in your head well after he injects new life into the greatest Eighties-steeped lyrical cliché of them all: 'I can't sleep until I feel your touch,'" and editor Jon Dolan praised the "europhile synth-pop-steeped" production, "Blinding Lights" evokes Depeche Mode and the Human League in its lonely-planet luster. David Smyth of Evening Standard also praised the song, calling it a "glorious blast of air punching Eighties synth-pop". Micah Peters from The Ringer selected it as one of the best on the album. The New York Times journalist Lindsay Zoladz named "Blinding Lights" one of the best songs of 2020: "It's a propulsive, modernized bit of '80s pastiche. It's always a blessing when the year's most overplayed pop song happens to be one you wouldn't mind hearing a billion and one times anyway," and editor Jon Caramanica added that "'Blinding Lights' is a sterling song that evokes both an idyllic future and triggers aural sense memories of mega-pop's glory years. 'Blinding Lights' could have been lifted from a found Jazzercise tape from 1986, though the chilly synths have a slightly sinister tinge says a lot about the durability of the Weeknd's early noir—the full commitment to the louche aesthetic he embodied—that even the raging centrist popularity of 'Blinding Lights' can't disinter it."
Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian named "Blinding Lights" one of the best songs of 2020: "It's a titanic pop production from backroom genius Max Martin, who seems to pay homage to his fellow Scandinavians a-ha with the peppy gated drums. Abel Tesfaye himself shows he can slip between genres casually as he does the lovers in his songs, notching up another wedding disco classic." When describing the Weeknd's ode to '80s music, Nick Levine of BBC News named "Blinding Lights" one of the best songs of 2020: "Co-written and co-produced with Swedish songwriting genius Max Martin, its synth-pop shimmer manages to feel retro and contemporary at the same time—a tricky thing to pull off. Still, the key to its enduring popularity could lie in its ambiguity. Though 'Blinding Lights'' explosive chorus is one of the year's most familiar and uplifting, there's a dash of darkness baked in that keeps things interesting." Editor Makael Wood from Los Angeles Times named "Blinding Lights" one of the best songs of 2020: "The Weeknd's throwback synth-pop smash was so ubiquitous this year that you couldn't avoid hearing it even when you weren't going anywhere. One aspect that kept it from wearing out its welcome: a crisp tempo just a few ticks faster than you're always expecting."
The song topped the records charts in over 40 countries, including in the Weeknd's native Canada, where it became his fifth chart-topper on the Canadian Hot 100. In the United States, "Blinding Lights" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four non-consecutive weeks, and went on to set new records as the song with most weeks spent in the top five and top ten, becoming the first song to hold a spot in the top ten for an entire year.
It eventually broke the record for the longest-charting song on the Hot 100 of all time, spending 90 weeks on the chart. The song ended 2020 as Billboard's number-one song of the year, and on November 23, 2021 was named the number-one song of all time in Billboard Hot 100 history. On April 5, 2022, it was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling more than ten million copies in the United States. Furthermore it topped or near-topped the charts in Australia, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the UK, in addition to many other countries around the world.
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