Written by: Yessenia Arevalo🇸🇻
Still from the music video via The Weeknd
Abel Tesfaye known more commonly by his stage name “The Weeknd, and Anitta collabed to create the third single following Tesfaye’s last album São Paulo. This song created massive waves upon its release, debuting on the Billboard Hot 100.
Tesfayes's close colleague requested a voice recording from Anitta to complement his performances in São Paulo, Brazil. They later decided to work together to perform the song São Paulo because they enjoyed her voice recording so much. It was originally only intended to be a performance, but it developed into a song and was made available on Oct. 31.
Fans of both Anitta and Tesfaye have shown massive amounts of support for São Paulo, despite what may seem to be an unexpected collaboration. Tesfaye has continuously dominated the music industry, specifically the American scene with his mix of R&B, pop, and electronic music.
Anitta has also dominated the music scene in Latin America, which is shown through her Grammy award nominations and collaborations with massive names in the Latin music scene.
São Paulo combines Brazilian funk with R&B to create a sensual and unapologetically intense song. In combining two seemingly different genres, fan bases around the world join together to celebrate and enjoy such a striking song. According to Billboard, São Paulo was chosen by fans as their favorite new release, winning by about 66% of votes.
Despite all the love shown towards the song, there are many critiques regarding it. Mark Chinapen, an author for Modern Music Analysis shares three main points of criticism. He shares that Anittas voice was not utilized to its fullest.
“It’s a shame that her appearance was delegated to essentially a repetition of the same 2 verses. “São Paulo” could have used more from her, like another verse or her singing the chorus,” he said.
Additionally, he comments that lyrically, it was the typical content we see from The Weeknd, further commenting that he “says a whole lot of nothing.”
One of the last critiques, which appears to be a shared opinion among fans on Tiktok, Reddit, and X (formerly known as Twitter,) is that the music video that accompanies the song does not add to the songs or albums aesthetic
A user under the r/TheWeeknd thread on Reddit shares, “I was so disappointed. There wasn't much of a story.... just a talking belly.....” Tesfaye has reshaped the typical look of music videos, such as his “Is There Someone Else?” video. Despite his unique approach to music videos, São Paulo’s video appeared out of place. Each of Tesfayes albums lie under an aesthetic, as we’ve seen with his most recent album, Until Dawn. All three videos of his released singles appear out of place and incoherent.
Chinapens comment regarding the underuse of Anittas vocals is one I am hesitant to express my agreement with, but ultimately I share the same opinion. Anitta has an outstanding voice, and if used to its full potential, could have elevated the song exponentially. The fragments that contained her vocals subjectively stood out more compared to the portions only featuring Tesfaye.
Despite the love, admiration, and critiques surrounding the song from both myself and others, I believe São Paulo to be a fun music release. Although lyrically, it was weaker compared to much of Tesfayes music, it is an entertaining piece to sit back, listen, and enjoy. The moments in which I chose to listen to the song, I enjoyed the beat and found myself constantly bobbing my head to the lyrics. São Paulo has successfully become a tune I hum to myself when I wash dishes, clean up, or do other seemingly mundane activities.
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