The Weeknd dropped the brooding video for his recent one-off single, “Hong Kong,” on Thursday (Nov. 12). The lush travelogue-style trip through the daytime hustle and nighttime rush of the island is enhanced in the Evan Larsen-directed clip by guest vocals from Cantopop legend Faye Wong and a co-starring role from Chinese supermodel Ming Xi.
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Shot in Mong Kokand and Hong Kong Island, the clip opens with dawn awakening across the harbor as the singer croons, “There was something in the air/ I knew that in that moment I would burn the world to keep you warm/ But my life won’t let me stay/ So if we never speak again/ At least we still have soul,” over gentle keyboards and a leisurely beat.
Taking viewers through the rush of a bustling market, it finally lands on the shades-wearing singer about a minute in as he broodily smokes a cigarette while sitting alone in a bar as Xi lets her hair get whipped by the wind while hurtling through a tunnel at night in a flashy red sports car.
As night falls and the city lights up, Abel slips into a karaoke bar and sings about a love that ended before it had just begun. By the conclusion, he’s alone again, naturally, having a solitary drink on the balcony of a high-rise.
“Hong Kong,” the singer’s first new music of the year, got its live debut at Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong on Oct. 24 when it spooled on a big screen during the first night of his four-show run at the venue. According to a release, the track has already broken a number of records on China’s major music streamers, including becoming the biggest first-day debut for a non-Mandarin song in the past five years across streams, likes, saves, comments and shares on NetEase Cloud Music. It also earned the biggest debut ever for a Western male artist on QQ Music.
The Weeknd concluded his After Hours Til Dawn tour on Nov. 5 at TM National Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after performing 176 shows in 67 cities, in 30 countries on five continents on the record-breaking tour that sold more than nine million tickets and grossed in excess of $1.3 billion.
Watch the “Hong Kong” video below.
