My Dear Melancholy is described as a return to the darker style of the Weeknd's earlier work, evident inTrilogy (2012) andKiss Land (2013). The EP was supported by the single "Call Out My Name", which peaked at No. 4 on the USBillboard Hot 100. It received generally favourable reviews and debuted at No. 1 on the USBillboard 200.
Prior to the release ofMy Dear Melancholy,the Weeknd had already created an album that was more upbeat. As the circumstances in his life changed, he chose to completely scrap the project, stating that he no longer felt a connection towards it.[8]
On March 3, 2018, American rapperTravis Scott teased a new project by the Weeknd on Twitter, referring to it as "scary" and comparing it to when he "first heard" the latter's music.[9] Later that month,Tesfaye suggested that he was in the finishing stages of completing new work, sharing multiple silent videos onInstagram of a recording studio, with the caption "mastering". This followed several months of in-studio pictures shared on the platform.[10][11]
On February 22, Tesfaye shared an image of a title, written on a notepad.[12]
On March 28, he hinted at the release of a new album, posting a screenshot of a text-message conversation between creative directorLa Mar Taylor and himself, concerning whether or not they should "drop [a new project on] Friday".[13] The next day, he announced it would be released that night, sharing its cover art and title.[14]
Following the EP's release, vertically orientated music videos for "Call Out My Name" and "Try Me" were released exclusively throughSpotify.[15][16]
During an interview withGQ in 2021, the Weeknd said of the EP, "I made it in like three weeks. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I knew how I wanted it to sound—and that was it."[17]
Lyrically,My Dear Melancholy is oriented aroundheartbreak and anger,[21][22] focusing on Tesfaye's past relationships, mainly his highly publicized romances with modelBella Hadid[23] and singerSelena Gomez.[24] In an interview withEsquire in 2020, Tesfaye described the EP as a "cathartic piece of art".[25] The theme is a complete change from the Weeknd's past two projects, which werepop-based and more mainstream.[26] On the album, the artist mentions Gomez's kidney transplant operation and her relationship withJustin Bieber.[27] The Weeknd reworks Gomez's lyrics from the song "Same Old Love" on the track "Wasted Times" in a way thatBillboard described as "tormenting".[28]
My Dear Melancholy was met with generally favourable reviews. AtMetacritic, which assigns anormalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received anaverage score of 63, based on 16 reviews.[30] Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 5.7 out of 10, based on their assessment of critical consensus.[29]
Alex Petridis ofThe Guardian stated thatMy Dear Melancholy "abandons the pick'n'mix and indeed hit-and-miss approach of previous albumStarboy in favour of something more cohesive: uniformly downbeat and twilit, it flows really well", but criticized its lyrical content.[21] In a positive review, Ryan B. Patrick ofExclaim! commented that the project serves "as a soft reset of sorts, a musical palette cleanser that takes stock of what the Weeknd has accomplished thus far".[33] ForNME, Jordan Bassett called the album "thrilling", praising its tight and concise nature and "notable moments of stylistic brilliance" evident in Gesaffelstein's contributions, though he criticized its lack of character, noting that the Weeknd's predictability has led to his "impact [becoming] increasingly scattershot".[34] Online publicationHipHopDX commented that the EP "doesn't break any new ground, and — as he's done in the past — revisits elements of previous projects. However, without the bloated tracklist ofStarboy, and any attempt to please an audience outside of his core, the lack of innovation doesn't seem to take away from the concise, focused, conceptual nature of this well-produced R&B gem".[5]
In a mixed review forPitchfork, Larry Fitzmaurice wrote that the project "finds him in limbo between the bleary-eyed vibe of his early mixtapes and the bulletproof pop stylings of his last two albums", praising the record's production and "Tesfaye's still-sharp ear for cool, contemporary sounds", but also criticizing similarities to his earlier work—specifically between "Call Out My Name" and "Earned It", as well as "Hurt You" and "I Feel It Coming"—and concluding that "it's too early in this stage of Tesfaye's career to so obviously attempt to replicate past glories".[6] Israel Daramola ofSpin criticized the album's lyrics as "mopey" and "whiny" and its production as "endlessly sludgy and murky", writing that the album "is incredibly self-involved and self-pitying, nothing but surface-level introspection that shows a lot of emotion but none of it in the service of anything but the singer's ego".[18]
My Dear Melancholy was streamed more than 26 million times on its first day of release onApple Music,[41] double the amount of streams that were obtained on Spotify, according toRepublic Records,[42] though Spotify claims thatMy Dear Melancholy was able to rake up 29 million streams in 24 hours.[43] The EP was projected to move between 165,000 and 180,000album-equivalent units in the first week[44] and eventually moved 169,000 album-equivalent units, with 68,000 being pure sales, hitting No. 1 on the USBillboard 200.My Dear Melancholy was also the shortest album, by track count, to top theBillboard 200 in eight years, a feat previously accomplished byGlee: The Music, Journey to Regionals.[45] As of July 2018, it had sold 117,000 copies in the US.[46]
^"Slovak Albums – Top 100".ČNS IFPI. RetrievedApril 8, 2022.Note: On the chart page select SK – Albums – Top 100 under the left field and "201814" on the field beside the word "Zobrazit", and then click over the word to retrieve the correct chart data.
^"2018년 Album Chart" (in Korean). Gaon Music Chart.Archived from the original on January 1, 2019. RetrievedDecember 31, 2018.
^"Årslista Album – År 2018" [Yearly Album List – Year 2018] (in Swedish). Sverigetopplistan.Archived from the original on January 15, 2019. RetrievedJanuary 15, 2019.
