The Weeknd

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known as The Weeknd, was born on 16 February 1990, reported variously as in Toronto or Scarborough. He is the only child of the Ethiopian immigrants Makkonen Tesfaye and Samrawit Hailu, who separated soon after his birth, and he was raised in Scarborough by his mother and grandmother. He grew up speaking Amharic, was raised as an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian, and listened to Ethiopian music alongside Michael Jackson and Prince.

In late 2010 he uploaded three songs anonymously to YouTube under the name The Weeknd, without showing his face. After co-founding the label XO, he released three mixtapes in 2011, House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence, free through his website. House of Balloons was critically acclaimed and was shortlisted for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize, and the three were later compiled as Trilogy (2012).

The Weeknd's moody, atmospheric alternative R&B gave way to a pop sound with albums such as Starboy (2016) and My Dear Melancholy (2018). He has had seven number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including The Hills, Can't Feel My Face, Starboy and Blinding Lights.

His fourth studio album, After Hours (2020), debuted atop the Billboard 200, his fourth consecutive number-one album. It produced Blinding Lights, which became the longest-charting song in Billboard Hot 100 history, at 90 weeks. In November 2021 it was ranked the number one song on Billboard's Greatest Hot 100 of All Time list, surpassing The Twist.

On 7 February 2021 he headlined the Super Bowl LV halftime show, the first Canadian solo artist to do so, reportedly spending $7 million of his own money on the performance. Toronto declared 2 July The Weeknd Day. His After Hours til Dawn tour from 2022 to 2026 set the record as the highest-grossing tour by a male soloist, and he co-created and starred in the HBO series The Idol (2023) and the film Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025), alongside an album of the same name.