The Weeknd's 'Save Your Tears' Collab with Ariana Grande Ranks #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd, has had a terrific last few years. With psychedelic pads and atmospheric synths that are reminiscent of the 80s, his After Hours is arguably an album that houses his best work.

Then, there are the videos that tell the story of a man having a really wild night, all the while paying homage to cinema classics like Chinatown, and more importantly, Martin Scrase’s After Hours. 

The whole album is a sound that was found in Starboy, and a theme continued from My Dear Melancholy. But, after releasing some straight-up bangers, being the highlight of MTV’s VMA and AMA with a Kenny G intro, to being bafflingly ignored by the Grammys and completely boycotting them, what is next in line? 

For the artist, it's doing victory laps with collaborations with contemporaries he admires. Stellars artists have been featured on his tracks as remixes, like Doja Cat for the In Your Eyes, and Rosalia for Blinding Lights. And now, he has passed the torch to Ariana Grande.

'Save Your Tears' (Remix) Hits #1 On Billboard

Save Your Tears (Remix), originally released on April 23rd, has succeeded in reaching the top position on the Billboard charts. The song has also gathered over 38 million views in the first week of its release on YouTube too.

The song also becomes the sixth number one record for both The Weeknd and Ariana Grande.

In addition to that, The Weeknd, now, is the first male artist in history to achieve 3 #1 hits on Billboard Hot 100 from the same album in three different years — i.e., Heartless (2019), Blinding Lights (2020), and Save Your Tears (2021).

This is The Weeknd and Grande's third venture together, the previous ones being Love Me Harder from 2014 and Off The Table from 2020.

Save Your Tears (Remix) caught hype since the Canadian singer-songwriter posted a snippet of the track on Twitter with Grande’s ghostly vocals harmonizing with him. Grande later retweeted the post, perpetuating a chain of anticipation that satisfyingly concluded with the recent song and video release.

Directed by Jack Brown with Blinkink as the producer, The Weeknd dons his now-signature glasses to relive his After Hours persona in the animated video. He engineers a robotic version of Grande. 

She then adds her own new set of lines that reply to his in the second verse. She sings about how she knows he doesn’t like when she’s alone and that she regrets putting him through hell by going away.

Grande sings it flawlessly. The verse then swells into a wistful dual harmony, her timber sensually mingling with the tenor falsetto of Weeknd. 

Prior to the remix, Save Your Tears was already one of the best-received songs from the album, and the decade as some argue. It had already received the Platinum certification for surpassing more than a million unit sales. 

That being said, the Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, does not conventionally certify alternate versions of a song. But if the remix were to make its way into, say, a new deluxe version of the album, an exception can be made. 

If done, it reaching platinum as well would not be a big assumption, as the music has proven to be successful already with the #1 position on the Billboard chart.