The Weeknd's Official Top 40 biggest songs in the UK revealed

As The Weeknd, Abel Tesfaye has moved through a lifetime of career roles, from alt-R&B unknown to now being one of the most dominant and successful pop masterminds right now.

With the release of his sixth studio album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, looming, we thought it was high time to unveil The Weeknd's biggest-ever songs in the UK, revealing his Official Top 40 biggest hits on the Official Chart for the first time ever.

Luckily, we can see the length and breadth of Tesfaye's artistry on show here; from his humble beginnings as a forward-thinking R&B savant, spilling dark, gothic tales of excess and woe (House of Balloons), to his emergence as the muse of Max Martin and co (In Your Eyes) and his headline-grabbing link-ups with pop queens Lana Del Rey (Lust For Life), Ariana Grande (Love Me Harder) and Madonna (Popular).

But before we dive into the Top 40, here's a closer look at the Top 5.

5. Can't Feel My Face

Released: 2015
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 3
Total UK chart units: 2.3 million

When he first debuted, it was impossible to imagine that version of The Weeknd becoming a dominant commercial force, but following a big breakout pop moment as part of Ariana Grande's Love Me Harder, The Weeknd channeled the spirit of Michael Jackson on the undeniably funky Can't Feel My Face, a straight-out pop banger that compares falling in love to addiction (handily retaining the dark, gothic imagery of his first releases).

It was an immediate commercial success, peaking at Number 3 in the UK and along with the one-two punch of the equally abrasive The Hills announced The Weeknd's intention to take Top 40 pop to the shadows.

4. Save Your Tears

Released: 2020
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 2
Total UK chart units: 2.6 million

A sparkly synth-pop highlight from After Hours, given Blinding Lights becoming a once-in-a-generation megahit (but more on that in a bit...) Save Your Tears proved The Weeknd wasn't done making chart hits anytime soon.

The single got a big boost, of course, thanks to a remix featuring Ariana Grande, which helped push it to Number 2 in the UK. Overall, it's The Weeknd's second-biggest streamed hit on the Official Chart (336 million streams and counting).

3. The Hills

Released: 2015
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 3
Total UK chart units: 2.6 million

If you were a betting man, you probably would have pegged on Can't Feel My Face becoming the biggest hit from The Weeknd's second full album, Beauty Behind The Madness, but Abel has always been one step ahead of the curve. On paper, at least, nothing about The Hills reads like a bonafide hit. It's a scuzzy, reverb soaked R&B track that includes a cacophony of industrial-rock synths and trap beats, about the singer's late-night rendezvous with a mysterious hook-up. 

But it's this exact tilt against expectations that lends The Hills its brilliance, and obviously buoyed by Can't Feel My Face successes, it managed to reach a peak of Number 3 on the Official Singles Chart, collecting 2.6 million total UK chart units and 260 million streams to date.

2. Starboy (with Daft Punk)

Released: 2016
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 2
Total UK chart units: 2.9 million

Daft Punk do not do collaborations. The mysterious French dance droids stay in their own lane, save for very occaisons and very rare artists (prior to Starboy, they'd contributed to Kanye West's 2013 opus Yeezus). So it was in 2016 that The Weeknd unveiled not one but two collaborations with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo; the Off The Wall-esque I Feel It Coming and the title track of his third album, a stuttering yet highly confident electro-pop smash, which sees The Weeknd wax lyrical about the trappings of being, well, a star, boy!

1. Blinding Lights

Released: 2019
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 1
Total UK chart units: 4.6 million

We're blinded by the lights! The Weeknd was already a dominant cultural force before he released Blinding Lights at the end of 2019, but it would be a massive understatement to say that Blinding Lights changed The Weeknd's career. It's done more than that; it shifted cultural tides, becoming one of the most influential hits of a generations and the reverberations of it can still be felt in pop today.

The Weeknd's first-ever UK Number 1 single (yes, really), Blinding Lights spent eight weeks at the top of the Official Singles Chart and logged a very impressive 147 weeks overall in the UK Top 100. It was named the Official biggest song of 2020 by Official Charts and is one of the most-streamed songs of all time in the UK and one of the biggest songs of the last decade.

But the cultural reach of Blinding Lights is far greater; it helped kickstart a renaissance of the long-thought dead disco genre, helping funky smashes like Doja Cat's Say So and Dua Lipa's Don't Start Now usher in a revival that is still very much present in the charts.

Obviously, Blinding Lights is the biggest single released by The Weeknd in the UK. It's accumulated 4.6 million chart units overall, and is also his most-streamed (531 million streams) song too.