The Weeknd Drops Lush Travelogue Video For ‘Hong Kong’: Watch

The Weeknd dropped the brooding video for his recent one-off single, “Hong Kong,” on Thursday (Nov. 12). The lush travelogue-style trip through the daytime hustle and nighttime rush of the island is enhanced in the Evan Larsen-directed clip by guest vocals from Cantopop legend Faye Wong and a co-starring role from Chinese supermodel Ming Xi.

Shot in Mong Kokand and Hong Kong Island, the clip opens with dawn awakening across the harbor as the singer croons, “There was something in the air/ I knew that in that moment I would burn the world to keep you warm/ But my life won’t let me stay/ So if we never speak again/ At least we still have soul,” over gentle keyboards and a leisurely beat.

Taking viewers through the rush of a bustling market, it finally lands on the shades-wearing singer about a minute in as he broodily smokes a cigarette while sitting alone in a bar as Xi lets her hair get whipped by the wind while hurtling through a tunnel at night in a flashy red sports car.

As night falls and the city lights up, Abel slips into a karaoke bar and sings about a love that ended before it had just begun. By the conclusion, he’s alone again, naturally, having a solitary drink on the balcony of a high-rise.

“Hong Kong,” the singer’s first new music of the year, got its live debut at Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong on Oct. 24 when it spooled on a big screen during the first night of his four-show run at the venue. According to a release, the track has already broken a number of records on China’s major music streamers, including becoming the biggest first-day debut for a non-Mandarin song in the past five years across streams, likes, saves, comments and shares on NetEase Cloud Music. It also earned the biggest debut ever for a Western male artist on QQ Music.

The Weeknd concluded his After Hours Til Dawn tour on Nov. 5 at TM National Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after performing 176 shows in 67 cities, in 30 countries on five continents on the record-breaking tour that sold more than nine million tickets and grossed in excess of $1.3 billion.