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House Of Balloons was the first installment of a mixtape trilogy, all of which arrived by the end of 2011. After working on his debut for years (and gifting a few cuts from its planned tracklist to Drake for his 2011 album, Take Care), the Weeknd rushed to release a follow-up. “There are lyrics on Thursday, I don’t even know what the fuck I said,” he quipped in that aforementioned 2013 interview.
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Its title is derived from the nickname the singer gave to his former home in Parkdale, Toronto. The mixtape received widespread acclaim, with critics praising its dark aesthetic, production, and lyrical content. It is widely regarded as a major influence on both contemporary and alternative R&B. House of Balloons also contains elements of soul, trip hop, indie rock, dream pop, and electronic music. Lyrically, the mixtape explores the Weeknd's drug use and experiences with love, heartbreak, and promiscuity.
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Because of this, it is widely considered one of the most influential R&B projects in recent years. House of Balloons, along with Thursday and Echoes of Silence, was later remastered as the Trilogy album in 2012, with one extra song on each tape. The bonus track for this mixtape was his twenty-eighth song, “Twenty Eight”. There was a lot of that going on in the early 2010s — perhaps no more so than any other era, but all of it seemed to be getting attention. Death Grips made everyone forget that hip-hop had ever previously brushed shoulders with punk, noise, and metal — ditto for Sleigh Bells with regards to pop music.
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The tape has all of its predecessor’s haziness and very little of its punch. The two subsequent releases — the trilogy-capping Echoes Of Silence and lush 2013 debut album Kiss Land — also lack in areas that House Of Balloons triumphed, namely a consistent, impeccably-curated vibe. But looking back I’d call them the Weeknd’s most underrated material, victims of not sounding enough like the breakout tape.
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Additionally, the mixtape was featured on several music critics' and publications' end-of-year albums lists. Complex called it the "best album of 2011;" Stereogum ranked it number 5; The Guardian ranked it number 8; The A.V. Club ranked it number 6; SPIN ranked it (as well as Thursday) number 13; while Pitchfork ranked it number 10. As a whole, House of Balloons was the seventh most frequently mentioned album in music publications' year-end top ten lists. The mixtape was named as one of the longlisted of nominees for the 2011's Polaris Music Prize. The mixtape's title track was placed on Pitchfork's list of top 100 songs of 2011 at number 57, while "The Morning" was number 15. In 2021, it was listed at No. 488 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Best Songs of All Time".
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Kiss Land did well for itself commercially, debuting at #2, but as far as hits go, this still wasn’t Pop Star Weeknd. House of Balloons was commercially released as part of the compilation album Trilogy (2012) and included the singles "Wicked Games" and "Twenty Eight", the latter of which is a bonus track. On its tenth anniversary, the original mixtape was released in digital formats, and included samples which failed to gain copyright clearance on Trilogy. The reissue was accompanied by a limited edition line of merchandise designed by architect Daniel Arsham.
Perhaps because he was making the darkest R&B imaginable, the anonymous approach worked better for him than it did for psych-pop bands, anthemic indie bands, chandelier-scraping belters, voiceless electronic musicians, and electronic musicians who probably should’ve remained voiceless. Like Tyler, The Creator, who perhaps not-so-coincidentally was blowing up around the same time, Tesfaye’s brash lyrics were very obviously a put-on, no matter how shocking or aspirational they got. The laundry list of drugs consumed in “House Of Balloons/Glass Table Girls” gives the preposterous smoothie from the “EARL” video a run for its money; the $7,000 glass table name-dropped in the same song was probably a little out of his price range at the time. “This was still a time when ‘enigmatic electronic producer’ was a phrase you’d find in every other track blurb,” Ian Cohen recently observed when looking back on Love Remains, an album by similarly “mysterious” artist How To Dress Well that was released five months prior to House Of Balloons.
I knew “Can’t Feel My Face” was a lock for the charts as soon as I heard it, and I’m no Hot 100 Nostradamus. It’s a loft where the walls kick like they’re six months pregnant, where women call cabs at dawn and forget their high-heeled shoes. The Internet buckled under the strain of demand when the Weeknd followed up their highly praised "What You Need" with a free full-length mixtape a few days ago. That clamor shouldn't have been surprising; this is music that feeds off elements drawn from R&B but uses them to crack open a world that skews away from that fundamental starting point. Like a lot of great pop acts, the Weeknd are shameless in their thievery, but they also have the savvy it takes to steal wholesale from other artists and come out the other side sounding like no one but themselves. The project, primarily produced by Illangelo and Doc McKinney, pushed the boundaries of R&B, with its influences of trip-hop, indie rock and dream pop and incorporations of electronic/urban genres.
Especially R&B, which is a genre that is heavily influenced by how the artist looks. The song "High for This" was featured in the promo for the final season of the HBO show Entourage in July 2011. On November 24, 2011, the Weeknd's first official music video, for his song "The Knowing," hit the Internet on his Vimeo page. The song was first released on House of Balloons and the video was directed by French filmmaker Mikael Colombu, who has also worked with American singer CeeLo Green.
Trilogy received generally positive reviews from critics, who reinforced the previous acclaim of the mixtapes, although some found it indulgent. It was promoted with three singles and the Weeknd's concert tour during September to November 2012. The album charted at number five in Canada and number four in the United States. How did an X-rated lothario, whose live debut in the US (at Coachella 2012) earned mixed reviews, make his way to the biggest stages in the world? For one, he’s toned down his content considerably since his “Or Nah” remix days — the most eyebrow-raising part of his last album is an extended bit about having sex in his recording studio, and save for a couple of really gross bars, he’s steered clear of major controversy (just don’t ask stan armies). The singles have gotten poppier; his performance chops, while still not god-tier, have improved.
Musically, House of Balloons mixes R&B with elements of rock, electro, and hip-hop. Maybe there is a deeper issue with that, but I feel like with me it’s never been about the artist and the image of the artist. And I felt like it was the most unbiased reaction you can get to the music, because you couldn’t put a face to it.
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Liturgy and Deafheaven’s radical updates on black metal put the genre in conversation with shoegaze and other “hipster” fare. It-producers of the moment AraabMuzik and Clams Casino churned out cutting-edge rap beats that owed just as much to trance and ambient music, respectively, as they did to hip-hop. What’s more impressive and surprising, to a day-one fan, is the Weeknd’s never-ceasing commitment to self-curation and aesthetic specificity.
That’s why the weirdo impulses — the whole red suit thing, the partnership with Oneohtrix Point Never, etc. — persist, but it’s also a masterclass in modern star-making. Anonymity may have been the marketing tactic du jour a decade ago, but more often than not, it’s hollow and unsustainable. What the Weeknd’s done is turn himself into a moodboard of his favorite directors, musicians, vibes. He began that process in auspicious form on House Of Balloons, and while he may have covered a ton of ground to get to where he is in 2021, the self-mythologizing is still going strong. On March 21, 2021, the tenth anniversary of the mixtape’s release, it was finally added to streaming services.
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