The Weeknd released Starboy, his third studio album, on November 25, 2016, through XO and Republic Records. With the tenth anniversary of the Starboy album arriving on November 25, 2026, this is a revisited look at the record that turned a Toronto underground voice into a permanent pop headliner, stated plainly: nothing here is new, and the album has never really left.
A Debut Week Built On Streaming
Starboy debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 348,000 album equivalent units, 209,000 of them pure sales, powered by 175.2 million on demand streams in its first week, as Billboard reported at the time. It also debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, his second consecutive number one album on both sides of the border.
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The sharpest detail from that week is still the sweep: all eighteen tracks charted on the Billboard Hot 100 at once. Album cuts were not filler around two singles. From the first week, the whole record behaved like a singles catalogue, which is exactly how the next decade played out.
The Sound He Was Reaching For
The album is bookended by Daft Punk, who produced and feature on the title track and the closer “I Feel It Coming,” with further appearances from Lana Del Rey, Future and Kendrick Lamar. The Weeknd explained the record’s posture at the time by pointing back to the music of his childhood:
The vibe on Starboy comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.
That framing holds up. Starboy is a pop album with a rapper’s posture, all shine on the surface and threat underneath, and it won Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 60th Grammy Awards in 2018, his second win in that category. The RIAA has since certified the album six times platinum.
The Second Life Nobody Predicted
Most albums get one chart life. Starboy got a second one bigger than the first. “Die For You,” a 2016 album track that peaked inside the top 50 on release, resurfaced through TikTok in late 2021, climbed back up the Hot 100 through 2022, and then, with the Ariana Grande remix released on February 24, 2023, reached number one in March 2023.
Billboard’s account of that week, preserved in its March 11, 2023 issue, records the scale of it: the remix drew 32.4 million streams and 81.1 million radio impressions in the United States in a single week, gave both artists their seventh Hot 100 number one, and completed the longest climb to number one for a non-holiday song in chart history, more than six years after release. IFPI counted the remix as the fourth best selling global single of 2023, at 1.78 billion subscription stream equivalents.
Ten Years On
Revisited honestly, Starboy is the hinge of The Weeknd’s career. Before it, he was a hitmaker with a mystique. After it, he was a stadium artist whose catalogue keeps regenerating hits on its own schedule. The title track, “Party Monster,” “I Feel It Coming” and “Die For You” all live separate chart lives now, and the album that holds them turns ten on November 25 with its story still being written by its own songs.
Related reading: the meaning behind The Weeknd’s Timeless.
