The Weeknd postpones new album “out of respect and concern” for LA residents
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The musician also cancelled a one-off Los Angeles show due to the fires, while Beyoncé has delayed an announcement – but the Grammys will go ahead. The Weeknd has pushed the release of his new album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, because of the California wildfires, as well as cancelling a one-off performance at the city’s Rose Bowl venue on 25 January “out of respect and concern for the people of LA county”.
Hurry Up Tomorrow was due for release on 24 January. It will now arrive a week later on 31 January. “This city has always been a profound source of inspiration for me, and my thoughts are with everyone impacted during this difficult time,” the musician, AKA Abel Tesfaye, said in a statement posted to Instagram.
Hurry Up Tomorrow is the sixth album by the Weeknd, the final part of a trilogy alongside After Hours and Dawn FM – and purportedly the last album under Tesfaye’s stage name. “As the Weeknd, I’ve said everything I can say,” Tesfaye told W magazine in 2023. “I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as the Weeknd. But I still want to kill the Weeknd. And I will. Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn.”.
The album is set to feature Playboi Carti, Anitta, Max Martin and Pharrell Williams among others. Tesfaye’s focus now, he wrote in a statement, “remains on supporting the recovery of these communities and aiding its incredible people as they rebuild”. Tesfaye’s XO Humanitarian Fund has previously donated $4.5m (£3.7m) to hunger relief efforts in Gaza.
