The Weeknd just took us on a late night tour of Hong Kong, and he brought a legend with him. The video for his single “Hong Kong” dropped Thursday, Nov. 12, with Cantopop icon Faye Wong on guest vocals and Chinese supermodel Ming Xi in a co starring role. It is moody, it is pretty, and it lands right as this song is already breaking records overseas.
The Video
Evan Larsen directed the clip, and it plays like a travel diary with a broken heart. We get the daytime hustle of the city and then the nighttime rush once the sun goes down. Abel is mostly alone through all of it, which fits the song.
It opens on dawn waking up over the harbor while he sings, “There was something in the air / I knew that in that moment I would burn the world to keep you warm.” Later in the song he adds, “So if we never speak again / At least we still have soul.” The beat stays slow and the keys stay gentle, so the whole thing feels like a long exhale.
Abel Takes On Hong Kong
The visual follows a simple arc, and it works.
- A bustling market opens the clip before it finds Abel, wearing shades, smoking a cigarette alone in a bar about a minute in.
- Ming Xi appears in a flashy red sports car, hair whipping in the wind as she speeds through a tunnel at night.
- As the city lights up, Abel slips into a karaoke bar and sings about a love that ended before it really started.
- By the end he is alone again, having a solitary drink on the balcony of a high rise.
Shot across Hong Kong, including Hong Kong Island, the video leans on the city as a character. Putting Faye Wong on the record is also a real statement of respect for the place he is singing about.
The Numbers Are Already Big
This is the first new music The Weeknd has put out this year, and the song got its live debut on Oct. 24 at Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong. It played on a big screen during the first night of his four show run there. Billboard reported, citing a release, that the track has already broken a number of records on China’s major music streamers.
- It had the biggest first day debut for a song not in Mandarin in the past five years on NetEase Cloud Music, across streams, likes, saves, comments and shares.
- It also earned the biggest debut ever for a Western male artist on QQ Music.
Those are big claims, and they point to how much reach he has in that market right now.
Coming Off A Monster Tour
The timing makes sense, too. The Weeknd wrapped his After Hours Til Dawn tour on Nov. 5 at TM National Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That run covered 176 shows in 67 cities across 30 countries on five continents.
According to Billboard, the tour sold more than nine million tickets and grossed over $1.3 billion. After a run like that, a one off single and a cinematic video feel like a victory lap with a purpose.
The Takeaway
“Hong Kong” is a quiet, moody single that is already doing loud numbers, and the video gives it a world to live in. The Weeknd just finished one of the biggest tours ever, and he is still finding new places to plant a flag.