Music
The Weeknd now going by his birth name on social media
Fans of the singer will notice a change next time they visit his social media accounts.
The Weeknd has reverted to his birth name, Abel Tesfaye, on his social media accounts.
As of Monday, the Canadian artist’s Twitter and Instagram accounts had been updated to show his birth name rather than his artistic name.
The change comes after he asked his fans on Twitter back in April if he should make the change.
“ABEL formally known as The Weeknd?” he asked fans in a tweet that received over 100,000 likes.
It also comes after he recently spoke to W Magazine in an interview published May 8 about his wider plans to move on from The Weeknd.
“I’m going through a cathartic path right now,” he said.
“It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close the Weeknd chapter. 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.”
Tesfaye also noted that his upcoming album may very well be the final one as The Weeknd.
“The album I’m working on now is probably my last hurrah as The Weeknd,” he told W Magazine.
“This is something that I have to do. As The Weeknd, I’ve said everything I can say.”
Tesfaye’s career so far
Born in Toronto to Ethiopian parents, Tesfaye rose to fame after uploading his first songs to YouTube back in 2010.
From there, Drake posted the early demos to his personal blog, with Tesfaye producing a nine-song mixtape, ‘House of Balloons’, which was later released as a free download.
Since then, Tesfaye has gone on to win four Grammy Awards. He also has more than 45 platinum singles and albums, as well as countless music records.
In March, Guinness World Records (GWR) announced that he was statistically the most popular musician on the planet.
He was honored with two Guinness World Record titles: the most month listeners on Spotify, with 111.4 million as of March 20, and the first artist to reach 100 million monthly listeners.
An increase in listeners was aided by his ‘Die for You’ remix with Ariana Grande, which went viral on TikTok.
The song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 - the seventh time Tesfaye has hit the top spot.