Hear The Weeknd’s New Single, Featuring Daft Punk on ‘Starboy’
Just last month, we caught wind of a collaboration between Daft Punk and The Weeknd once The Weeknd teased the song with a photo of his brand new haircut. The song which unexpectedly dropped last night is the first single off of The Weeknd’s third studio album that is slated for a release on November 25.
The collaboration titled “Starboy” is a highly energetic track that will soon reach the radio airwaves. In fact, Daft Punk and The Weeknd’s single can very well soon knock off The Chainsmokers’ and Halsey‘s “Closer” which currently sits at the #1 spot.
The haircut wasn’t just a random style change, either — Abel Tesfaye ditching his signature dreadlocks turned into shorthand for an entire era shift, and “Starboy” leaned right into that reinvention with icy synths and one of Daft Punk’s most recognizable basslines. It wasn’t a one-off collab either: the French robots ended up producing multiple cuts on the Starboy album, including the eventual single “I Feel It Coming,” making this one of the more stacked pop-meets-dance-royalty pairings of the whole year.
For Daft Punk, the collaboration marked a rare and highly sought-after feature appearance, since the duo has always been famously selective about which artists they’ll actually work with. Pairing up with The Weeknd, who was already coming off the massive success of Beauty Behind the Madness, gave both acts a chance to reach audiences that might not have crossed paths otherwise — pop radio meeting robot-helmet dance production in a way that felt genuinely fresh rather than forced.
The timing also mattered. Dropping “Starboy” the same night it was announced was a bit of a departure from the usual weeks-long single rollout most pop and R&B acts were doing at the time, and it fit the surprise-release energy that a lot of major artists were experimenting with in the mid-2010s. Combined with the visual reinvention and the sheer star power of a Daft Punk feature, it turned what could’ve just been another album-cycle single into a genuine event, the kind of drop that had timelines and group chats blowing up within minutes.
Listen to ‘Starboy’ below and let us know what you think about it in the comments section.
Click to listen on Apple Music.
“Starboy” went on to top charts worldwide and became one of the defining songs of 2016, proof that a Daft Punk co-sign still carries serious weight no matter how quiet the duo goes between projects.
