Until I Bleed Out by The Weeknd Song Info
“Until I Bleed Out” describes the end of Abel’s journey throughout "After Hours" with the record’s ending signifying that Abel’s body has run out of blood. He has given every last ounce of effort and emotion he can to the ventures he has undergone over the course of the record’s track listing, leaving him unable to keep pushing further for his relationship that he constantly talks about on the record. The song title may relate to the album’s concept and journey through Las Vegas, where all of the visual references released in the rollout of After Hours (excluding the cover arts of the first two singles) feature Abel bloody and injured. The track was first previewed in a snippet on March 18, 2020 posted to his social media accounts that was revealed to be the track by music-identifying app Shazam. A music video for the track was released on April 7, 2020. In the video, Abel is seen at a party surrounded by balloons and confetti. This alludes to the House of Balloons, Abel’s first mixtape. Now, however, the balloons are colored, representing the glamour of Abel’s life as an incredibly successful artist. Yet even after achieving super-stardom, Abel finds himself in a familiar setting, the house of balloons. This can be seen as a full circle moment for Abel, where the closing track of his latest album After Hours brings him back to the place where it all began. Now, he has a decision to make – does he fall back to his old ways, or does he finally break free of his addictions? The last scene of the video shows Abel escaping the party and watching in horror as another paralyzed version of Abel (one who chooses to stick to his old ways) is getting torn apart by people (Abel’s addictions) on a spinning platform in the center of the room. This escape from the house of balloons is Abel’s attempt to pave a new path in his life rather than going through the motions all over again and getting trapped in the vortex of hedonism. Abel stumbles out of the party into the desert surrounding the Las Vegas Strip, then falls to the ground out of sheer exhaustion from trying to break away from the life he has known for far too long. In the isolation of the desert, he bleeds out, while the other Abel, paralyzed in the house of balloons, torn apart by his own addictions, meets the same fate. Abel’s escape from the house of balloons wasn’t enough. As he lies in the middle of the desert, bleeding out, Abel Tesfaye is “Alone Again”. “Until I Bleed Out” debuted at #80 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the chart week of April 4, 2020.
