By Maddy Gaillard – Staff Reporter 

The Weeknd is a Canadian singer and songwriter. He has previously released four studio albums. After his fourth album released, “After Hours”, in March 2020, the Weeknd began to tease a fifth album. The Weeknd, (also known as Abel Makkonen Tesfaye) was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He started gaining attention after his second album release, “Beauty Behind the Madness”, which came out in 2015. Since then, the Weeknd has been receiving enormous amounts of fame and recognition. Some of his first hit singles, “Can’t feel my face” and “The Hills” topped the Billboard Hot 100. The Weeknd has also won three Grammy Awards, 19 Billboard Music Awards, six American Music Awards, 15 Juno Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards and an Academy Award nomination. 

“Dawn FM” has a “psychedelic radio” idea behind it and follows many themes. The album has an early almost scary feel but also has some upbeat and fast pacing songs. The album also has a narrator to further replicate the radio concept, the narrator for “Dawn FM”is Jim Carrey. The album opens with the song “Dawn FM” and has a very sci-fi and technology based sound. After the beginning of the song, Jim Carrey comes on and says, “You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM. You’ve been in the dark way too long, it’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms, scared? Don’t worry, we will be there to hold your hand and guide you through this painless transition, but what’s the rush? Just relax and enjoy another hour of commercial free music on 103.5 Dawn FM”. The opening to this album sets the tone and almost envisions the listener to be in a non-conscious state and going through some sort of transformation. 

The strong points for this album is that it is very different to other music projects. A decent part of the album is being narrated and portrays the radio idea. The songs “Out of Time” and “Sacrifice” have a fast toned beat and are not slow and eerie like some of the other songs on the album. The concepts are very interesting and there are many intriguing photos and tracks that makes “Dawn FM” a fascinating album to listen to. 

However, many people may not like the dark, eerie, scary tone the album has. If upbeat pop is more someone’s preferred music, this may not be the album for them. There is a lot of narrating and some people may not like that and just want to hear the music. “Dawn FM” is definitely more of a story it takes the listener through so that may be a pro or a con based on each person. 

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars