By: Elorm Nutakor

The Weeknd’s Trilogy is the three-part compilation album featuring songs from his original three mixtapes, House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence. The album is super dense, so in attempts to capture its complexity, I designed my listening experience to resemble the three days that make up the weekend.

Friday: Trilogy placed me right in the middle of the urban nightlife in a club called the “House of Balloons.” The night was packed with incidents as I peruse the scene, making empty promises to beautiful women left and right. Although I am juggling multiple relationships, I am in control and my manipulation talents are on point. Regardless, the night draws to a close in a trippy fashion and cumulates with such feelings of regret and agitation that I collapse right there on the floor of the club.

Saturday: This day is spent in a coma, and flashbacks of Thursday haunt me as I try to recall the reasoning behind aforementioned behavior. I remember a fight with the woman I love which forces me to leave my home for that of a friend. As I mourn my relationship, my friend convinces me to go back to the House of Balloons with him to cure my sad existence. I attempt to resist and even end up calling my girlfriend, but after being shut down and more than abusing every substance known to man, I give in to my his plan.

Sunday: Before the sun rises, I find myself alone in a hospital room. All that can be heard are Echoes of Silence. A feeling of emptiness ensues and I spend some time lamenting about the past night. While my memory of Thursday is vivid, I can barely remember Friday. The tables have turned, I have lost control, and now I have been manipulated. With the rising of the sun, I regain what little composure I still possess and leave the hospital without clearance.

Trilogy is an album that takes a person from high elevation to a low subsistence. This is what happened in the life of the character I created in a matter of days. Whether his life turns out better in the end is unclear, but either way he’s got options as he moves forward in his life.

Elorm is an English major at Mizzou in his first year with KCOU. Born in Ghana and raised in Illinois, he enjoys listening to a range of different music, from popular to obscure, as well as making music productions of his own. He is also a drummer and an amateur dancer.