Jim Carrey Nods to Prince in the Weeknd’s New Spoken Word Song
The Weeknd’s new album includes a profound hat-tip to Prince, with Jim Carrey adding a spoken word poem featuring a Purple Rain reference.
The Carrey-co-written track, “Phantom Regret by Jim,” closes out the Weeknd’s recently issued fifth LP, Dawn FM. You can hear the song below.
"If pain's living on when your body's long gone, and your phantom regret hasn't let it go yet, you may not have died in the way that you must,” Carrey calmly speaks on the track, deepening the zen-like atmosphere of synthesizers, electronics and reverb-bathed backing vocals. “All specters are haunted by their own lack of trust / When you're all out of time, there's nothing but space / No hunting, no gathering, no nations, no race / And heaven is closer than those tears on your face / When the purple rain falls, we are all bathed in its grace.”
The comic actor tweeted about the collaboration on Monday, four days before the album’s release. “I listened to Dawn FM with my good friend Abel [the Weekend] last night,” he wrote. “It was deep and elegant and it danced me around the room. I’m thrilled to play a part in his symphony.”
The Weeknd is a noted Prince fan. In May 2016, while accepting the Billboard Music Award for Top Hot 100 Artist, he saluted the late music icon. "I want to dedicate this award to the late great Prince. Rest in peace," he said onstage. "I was told not long ago that [on] his last TV appearance he had given me an award, and that was the greatest experience of my entire life.” (He was referencing the 2015 American Music Awards, when Prince presented the Weeknd with Favorite Soul/R&B Album for that year’s Beauty Behind the Madness.)
The R&B-pop singer told The Wall Street Journal in 2016 that the album was “a thousand percent” inspired by Prince and David Bowie, noting that he was scheduled to work with Prince at the latter’s Paisley Park studio prior to the latter's death.