The Weeknd has donated more than $10 million to multiple charitable causes in the past five years, from coronavirus relief to Gaza humanitarian aid to Los Angeles wildfire recovery, and he stepped up again by overlooking a grievous 2021 snub from the Grammy Awards to perform at the ceremony on Sunday, which has been overhauled to include wildfire-relief elements.
Ahead of the Weeknd’s performance, Grammys chief Harvey Mason Jr. addressed the singer’s tumultuous past with the Recording Academy, telling the audience that “criticism is okay.”
“I heard [the Weeknd] and I felt his conviction,” Mason Jr. continued. “What we all want is an organization dedicated to the well-being of all music makers, and one that reflects the entire music community, for now, and for future generations. So over the past few years, we’ve listened. We’ve acted. And, we‘ve changed. We’ve launched initiatives like the Black Music Collective, Women in the Mix, Academy Proud, and others. We have completely re-made our membership, adding more than 3,000 women voting members. The Grammy electorate is now younger, nearly 40% people of color, and 66% of our members are new since we started our transformation.”
The music world was stunned in 2020 when the Weeknd, whose smash single “Blinding Lights” shattered streaming records all over the globe (and remains the most-streamed song in Spotify history), was nominated for zero awards that year — a shocking development that led to Mason Jr. leading an overhaul of the show’s awards department and process. However, in the years since, the Weeknd has declined to submit his music for the awards. Thus, his appearance on Sunday night was even more of a surprise.
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The Weeknd sang two new songs from his just-released album “Hurry Up Tomorrow.” The singer opened with “Cry for Me” and followed it with “Timeless,” which included a performance from Playboi Carti, who is featured on the studio recording.
The Weeknd dropped “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” the long-awaited third chapter of his “After Hours” trilogy, on Thursday night. While the credits did not initially appear on streaming services, a rep for the artist confirmed that it features Lana Del Rey, Travis Scott, Future, Florence + the Machine, Giorgio Moroder, Anitta and others. See the full tracklist here.
The album will be followed on May 16 by a film of the same name, starring the Weeknd with Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan. The film was co-written and directed by Trey Edward Schults for Lionsgate and will be released exclusively in theaters.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” was originally scheduled to be released last week, but was delayed out of respect for the tragedy of the Los Angeles wildfires. Proceeds from the album track “Take Me Back to LA” will be donated to the LA Regional Food Bank, which is providing emergency food assistance to those directly impacted by the fires. The Weeknd chose to cancel the planned album release concert at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl and donated $1 million dollars to the LAFD Foundation, GoFundMe’s Wildfire Relief Fund and LA Regional Food Bank.