The Weeknd has stirred his fans into a frenzy by releasing a new surprise album in time for the Easter weekend, titled My Dear Melancholy.

Speculation had been rife over the previous few weeks that the megastar R&B singer, real name Abel Tesfaye, has been working on new material.

On Thursday evening (March 29th), The Weeknd’s official Instagram page refreshed with an image of some shadowy red and black artwork, with ‘My Dear Melancholy’ written in the top-left corner, and simply captioned ‘tonight’.

Immediately, social media started to heat up, with speculation that either this would be the lead single from a prospective new album (as per the usual promotional cycle) or that an entire would be dropped, with the holiday weekend just hours away and it now being customary that huge artists release new material without warning – like Kendrick Lamar did this time last year with DAMN.

tonight

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After the Instagram post, a sharp-eyed fan posted a picture of a billboard in London a few hours later that appeared to spoil the big news, confirmed that ‘My Dear Melancholy’ was indeed an album. Sporting the same image as the star’s Instagram image, the text read: “New Album from The Weeknd. Available Now.”

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The new record is actually more of a mini-album, spanning six new tracks and lasting just under 22 minutes.

Tesfaye is warming up for a number of prestigious headline sets in 2018, including at Coachella next month and the Lollapalooza festival later in the year.

The WeekndThe Weeknd is headlining Coachella in April

He recently contributed a new song to the Black Panther soundtrack, curated by Kendrick Lamar. He teamed up with the superstar rapper and female star SZA for ‘Pray For Me’, but in terms of an entire body of work, My Dear Melancholy is his first new material since third LP Starboy was released back in December 2016.

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