artist:  The Weeknd

songwriters:  Ahmad Balshe, Abel Tesfaye, Stephan Moccio, 

Jason Qhenneville

date released:  2015 by The Weeknd for the soundtrack of 

Fifty Shades of Grey

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye was born on 16 February 1990, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and raised in Scarborough.  He is an only child and of Ethiopian ancestry. His parents, Makkonen and Samra, emigrated from Ethiopia in the 1980s.

Since Tesfaye's father was never around when he was growing up, and his mother was constantly working, so his grandmother took care of him most of his young life. Because of this, Tesfaye speaks fluent Amharic; it was the first language he learned. His grandmother would take him to services at their Ethiopian Orthodox church.

Tesfaye says he adopted the stage name The Weeknd after dropping out of high school at the age of 17 and, along with a fellow crew-member, "left one weekend and never came home". The spelling was modified to avoid trademark issues with a Canadian band already named The Weekend