The Weeknd took to social media to show his appreciation for a meme poking fun at his famous stage name, with some help from Lady Gaga.
“The assistant in the record store when I ask if they have any Abel Tesfaye albums in stock,” a Twitter user cleverly wrote, using a clip of Mother Monster singing, “We only have the weekend,” on her Chromatica Ball Tour. (The lyric is the opening line of Gaga’s bombastically biblical Chromatica closer “Babylon.”)
The R&B crooner found the rather perfectly applied joke amusing, as evidenced by the single laugh-crying emoji he used to retweet the now-viral meme.
The confusion between The Weeknd’s legal name and stage name may be warranted for the casual listener, but the idea of an Abel Tesfaye record could be more than a jokey hypothetical soon: The superstar has made it clear in recent interviews that he intends to “kill” his longtime alter ego in the near future. “I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd. And I will. Eventually,” he said in a cover story for W magazine earlier this month. “I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn.”
Since then, he’s changed the profile names of his various official social channels to his given name as he prepares for the imminent premiere of his much-hyped HBO music industry drama The Idol.
Check out The Weeknd’s jovial reaction to the Gaga-inspired meme about his stage name below.
