Uncut Gems is one of the most beloved films of last year. Some remember it as Adam Sandler’s venture into “good acting”, some remember it as a piece of content that was made to induce anxiety and others remember it as Queen Elsa’s transformation into a strong, independent, sassy ex-wife.
While I certainly remember all of these things, to me, Uncut Gems is the movie which displayed The Weeknd’s superb acting skills.
We spoke about The Weeknd’s ‘Uncut Gems’ appearance and his new album ‘After Hours’ on this episode of It’s Been A Big Day For…
Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd) only made an appearance for a few minutes in this film, but it was certainly one of the more memorable scenes in the stressful, A24 flick. The film is set in 2012, which explains the outdated iPhones among other little easter eggs. But, because this film is set in the earlier half of the decade, The Weeknd (playing himself) pops up at a time when he isn’t famous yet. Hence, he performs in a small-ish club, singing ‘The Morning’ (a track off of his 2012 mixtape) standing amongst all the other club-goers. Spoilers, after this performance, he fights with Adam Sandler, but I digress.
Having said that, if you thought this would be the end of the relationship between The Weeknd and Uncut Gems, you’d be wrong. Just this week, The Weeknd dropped his latest album, After Hours. Some people on Twitter noticed the album sounded a lot like the film.
And while Abel Tesfaye was might have been very inspired by the film when writing his new project, there’s another reason for this. Daniel Lopatin (also known as Oneohtrix Point Never) produced the score to Uncut Gems and he also produced a handful of tracks on The Weeknd’s new album. Lopatin is given producer credit on ‘Repeat After Me (Interlude)’ and the closing track ‘Until I Bleed Out’. Additionally, he is listed as a writer on ‘Scared To Live’.
Josh Safdie (who co-directed Uncut Gems) told Variety about how The Weeknd and Lopatin first connected, saying: “Originally we were going to maybe do an original song… (The Weeknd) and (Daniel Lopatin), our composer, went into the studio and made like four or five amazing tracks. One of them we were going to use in the movie. Then we were like, you know what, this should be a time capsule. And he agreed.”
Well, it now looks as if those songs didn’t go to waste! Name a more iconic duo, I’ll wait. For more from these two, you can check out The Weeknd’s SNL performance from earlier this month, where he is accompanied by Daniel Lopatin.
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