That it rarely dips into album cuts and doesn't include all of the major singles speaks to the depth of the catalog. Bookended by two titanic but very different Daft Punk collaborations, it’s a listening. This also gathers the hits that originated on the soundtracks for Fifty Shades of Grey and Black Panther, plus the Ariana Grande duet 'Love Me Harder.' The Highlights is a well-selected point of entry. A year after the release of his GRAMMY-winning breakthrough2015’s Beauty Behind the Madness The Weeknd returns with Starboy, a double album of interstellar soul and feverish R&B that orbits around an ambitious title character. Beauty Behind the Madness and Starboy, the two previous number one albums, are also well represented, leaving the remainder to be drawn from House of Balloons and the My Dear Melancholy, EP (while the second and third tapes and Kiss Land are shut out). In February 2021, the Weeknd was still deep in the promotional cycle for After Hours, but it's nonetheless surprising that more selections are from that album - including three singles that went Top Ten in his native Canada and the U.S. Considering where he's gone in that time, from a shadowy unknown to a global pop star, there's no knocking the impulse to look back. Released two days before the Weeknd provided the halftime entertainment at Super Bowl LV, The Highlights also happened to arrive near the tenth anniversary of House of Balloons, the singer's debut mixtape.

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