Weeknd False Alarm Review [Meaning]

She loves everybody. Can't you tell by the sign? She loves everybody. She gets on all the time. It's a dumb philosophy and it hurts because it's a false alarm to me. She's a false alarm. All right, guys. And we're going to do a music video review on The Weeknd, False Alarm. So guys, welcome back. My opening number was the best you're going to get from the track. YouTube has fair use policies and we have to watch copyright violations, so instead of taking any risk I just decided I perform a bit of the number for you guys, and as you can see, there is a reason why The Weeknd is a singing superstar and I am not. But anyway, I don't generally do music videos or tracks. I don't think I'll be making a habit of this either. I leave music up to the talented listeners. The past years I've had a kind of falling out with a lot of the music industry, so I limit whom I listen to. However, this is a special occasion. This is quite the artistic performance as far as track and music video. It seems The Weeknd has been putting together these mini musical film productions, so I want to talk about what we got in this music video. What it may mean, and I'll later score it on a scale of 1 to 10. So we open up to this video and we get all these, uh, warnings of graphic violence and inappropriate content for certain ages. So it's not hard for me to understand that someone is going to be in trouble in this video. It's, uh, very violent a very violent bank heist is going on. It's very confusing and very chaotic. Now, the viewpoint we get is a first-person viewpoint, just like when we play Grand Theft Auto or all the first-person shoot 'em up games. It's done in the exact format. It's a bank heist, so you're viewing everything from the first-person perspective of one of the bank robbers. I really like this approach to the video, but what I got right away was that this doesn't feel like reality. It's a cool video, but of course being so similar to a video game made me feel like, okay, they don't seem to be going for reality in a sense. It's like when you play these first-person shooter games, your brain is aware, okay, it's a video game, it's not real, these game characters aren't real. So what seems to be a theme in many of The Weeknd videos is we are constantly getting a lot of symbolism. So even though the violence and the indiscriminate killings are going on, I get the sense like this situation, or the symbolic interpretation of it, is that the world The Weeknd lives in is not a real one, that these killings aren't of people but of ideas. So the video director says the song lyrically revolves around drugs, unromantic relationships, and materialism. So, you know, with drugs you get a false sense, I believe, of happiness. Uh, when you look at unromantic relationships, you get a false sense of love. And with materialism you can sometimes get a false sense of wholeness. So what it seems is that these ideas are played out symbolically through this bank heist, so it's not to be taken literal. That again, all these very violent killings we see in this video are symbolically killing ideas of materialism, fame, drugs— you take your pick. Now they take this beautiful, innocent young woman who is actually portrayed by this international supermodel. You know, I believe her name is Kristen Froseth, and she's part of the rural as well. So her appearance is very innocent, very girl next door. Like, this is probably the most innocent and pure looking girl next door type model you can find, and she's taken as a hostage as some leverage against the cops waiting outside to stop them. So it's just a lot of gunfire and action as they make it to their escape vehicle, pursued by the cops. So the next scene is they have to switch to another getaway car to throw the cops off, as they've been in a small war fighting cops and managed to get away temporarily. So as they're throwing money from one truck to another, our first person character decides to throw the hostage, or the beautiful innocent woman, over to the getaway car first, whereas his fellow robbers are upset he do that and risk their money and operation. They wanted him to throw the money bags first, but as they intend to leave the other truck running, an accident occurs killing one of the robbers who's too late to leap over to the new getaway car. So it appears the leader of the operation, he decides that the first-person character has become more of a liability than good, so he attacks— he attacks the, um, the first-person character. Um, he's about to kill him. However, the innocent hostage takes his gun and kills him before he can kill the first perspective character. And of course, these images you see there, you know, of this, this, uh, supermodel Kristen Forself, and, you know, some scenes as I'm looking through some of the scenes of the music video, um, you know, as, uh, basically like I said, YouTube's got pretty strict on us using these, uh music videos to review, and we can get all types of, uh, copyright, um, copyright, uh, via, you know, violations and so to speak. Uh, so, uh, basically Innocence is saved first by the Viewpoint character, but then it comes back in saves the first person character, which saved it earlier in the video. So because again, it's all symbolism, this model I believe is basically innocence, or what's left of innocence, so to speak, in the world of money, fame, and drugs. So after being wounded by the other bank robber, as the first person character looks up at the model or innocence, or the hostage rather. She points to the fact the driver is dead and nobody is driving the vehicle, so it flips over and crashes. First person character wakes to a shard of metal protruding from their chest. We then get the model or hostage coming to check on the first person as they are dying, and it seems to be genuine concern for their well-being. It almost appears like Stockholm syndrome. And we know that to be whenever a hostage develops feelings to their captors and genuine concern. So the hostage is still in cuffs. So, uh, you know, as or before the first person character dies, he gives them the keys to the handcuffs so they can free themselves. However, the hostage or innocents before long turns to the moneybags and starts collecting them. So, you know, at this point the hostage is going to take and keep the stolen money for themselves and not return it, you know. So the first person character, uh, grabs their gun as they see now that innocence is no longer innocent, but that innocence has now become corrupted. So they're about to shoot innocence, but— or the hostage, but decides not to. So they look in the mirror and we finally get to see it's The Weeknd, or Abel. And as you can kind of see in this far right-hand corner, uh, that's an image of, you know, The Weeknd when he's unmasked in the video. And we, we finally see that the first, uh, viewpoint character is actually him. And in their final act, as they lay there dying, to take their own— um, as they lay there, they're dying, rather, uh, they decide to take their own life, or symbolically kill their own self-image. I get that when you kill an image of yourself or idea of whom you are, you become someone else. So again, all these are all these scenes are symbolic of this lifestyle of money, fame, and drugs, and that even Innocence was seduced in the end by this lifestyle. Another interesting thing about this video is it seems like it's part of the same story as Starboy. You know, in Starboy, not only are they wearing the same exact clothes and crosses and symbolizing the same things. They both are killing the idea of themselves in both videos. So I find this all very interesting. I recall that years ago I and some friends talked about The Weeknd before he got really big and famous, you know, like he is now. He was still under the radar a bit then, but started to get the big mainstream collaborations uh, you know, with other big artists. And I remember some of my friends were very put off by this as they felt that if he went mainstream, his music would be compromised and it wouldn't be as good. So it's interesting that all these videos are about The Weeknd symbolically killing himself and becoming someone else. So I don't know if this to symbolize he's now killing himself to return to where he came from, or killing the old idea of himself to go forward. So it's very interesting to interpret, and we have to sit tight to see if the future videos give us more answers. But great and awesome video. I will now approach just the vocals and the instrumentals. I won't spend a lot of time on that. Uh, because The Weeknd has already been compared to, or he's said to be, the new Michael Jackson. So to get that title, we already know he's killing the vocals. And as far as instrumentals, all his choices, in my opinion, have been awesome. You know, some people didn't like his team-up with Daft Punk. I always loved Daft Punk. I think talent always will work and stand out regardless of what area or genre of music it comes from. So on a scale of 1 to 10, I have to give not only the track but this music video a perfect score of 10. Wow, wow, wow! I can now have a favorite artist again, something I haven't had for a long time in the music industry. So guys, I hope you like this review. Comment, let me know if you like this video or if you didn't like it. If you like and subscribe, that'll let me know, uh, I should be doing more music video reviews, as it's not really my department, and I wish to keep my areas limited for now so I can focus on the content people on the channel like. However, let me know and stay tuned to our next video. If you can't view it Maybe you're locked up. Maybe you're in jail. Then break out!