The Weeknd has shared the Ariana Grande-assisted remix to his latest After Hours single Save Your Tears. The highly anticipated release marks the third collaboration between the two diamond-selling musicians.
Save Your Tears (Remix) arrives with an official animated video directed by Jack Brown and produced by Blinkink. In the visual, The Weeknd is portrayed in the classic attire of his After Hours era: a bright red suit jacket paired in contrast with his black shirt, pants, shoes, and gloves. His character resembles the singer as he presented in Heartless and Blinding Lights before appearing with more and more bandages with each new visual leading up to the album release.
When The Weeknds character appears halfway through the Save Your Tears (Remix) visual, he is revealed as the figure operating the machinery that has been building a life-sized doll of Grande from the start. Beginning with her head, which dons the singers iconic ponytail, Grande travels down a conveyor belt that makes her up and pieces her together under The Weeknds control.
Met you once under a Pisces moon / I kept my distance cause I know that you / Dont like when Im with nobody else / Couldnt help it, I put you through hell, Grande sings on the songs second verse, which appears in place of The Weeknds usual third verse.
The remix transforms Save Your Tears into a harmony-filled call-and-response when paired with the original. Grandes added verse correlates with The Weeknds existing second verse, which is left off of the new recording, where he sings: You couldve asked me why I broke your heart / You couldve told me that you fell apart / But you walked past me like I wasnt there / And just pretended like you didnt care.
Rather than tacking a verse onto an existing, already successful track (Save Your Tears peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100), Grande offered layers of harmonies and soft whistle tones throughout the song in her unmistakable timbre.
The pair most recently teamed up towards the end of 2020 on Off The Table, a call-and-response deep cut from Grandes sixth studio album Positions. The track marked the two singers first collaboration since 2014s My Everything single Love Me Harder, which peaked at No. 7 on the Hot 100. As two artists who frequently blur the lines between R&B and pop, The Weeknd and Grande are expert collaborators.
Save Your Tears is the fourth official single from The Weeknds 2x platinum album After Hours. Currently No. 1 at Top 40 Radio, it follows In Your Eyes, Blinding Lights and Heartless as the most recent piece of the albums still unfolding narrative. This week, Blinding Lights extended its record for most weeks spent in the top 10 of the Hot 100 with 57 weeks. It previously held the No. 1 spot for four weeks.
The Weeknds Save Your Tears (Remix) featuring Ariana Grande is out now and can be purchased here.
