"It's a headspace I've gotta get into that I just don't have any more desire for," Tesfaye explains of his work as The Weeknd.

The Weeknd doesn't usually disappear for long stretches of time. No more than two years separate almost every album he has released since 2011, barring the nearly four-year space between 2016's Starboy and 2020's After Hours - but even that saw the release of My Dear Melancholy in 2018.

The 34-year-old music star – whose real name is Abel Tesfaye – admits he could soon walk away from his stage name and move on to a new phase of his career. Tesfaye has been performing as The Weeknd since 2010, when he first gained attention through anonymous YouTube uploads.