Moth To A Flame

“Moth To A Flame” marks the first collaboration between Swedish supergroup Swedish House Mafia and Canadian singer-songwriter-rapper The Weeknd.

The synth-pop song is the third single from Swedish House Mafia and their third studio album “Paradise Again”, which is due to be released in 2022. The catchy song was first teased by The Weeknd via his Instagram in early September 2021, with both him and Swedish House Mafia sharing a clip of the music video on the 19th October 2021, teasing the upcoming song. Swedish House Mafia spoke to Apple Music about the song’s inner workings, working with The Weeknd and the importance of prioritising The Weeknd’s unique voice:

“When you hear [Abel], it’s a blessing, you know? It’s not that hard to hear what you need to do [for the arrangement], because he is so dynamic in the way he expresses himself in a song. […] It’s like magic. You go to the studio and try to figure it out and it just happens. It’s hard to explain. But also he has a very unique voice that really sounds good on its own, so we really had to keep the music back a lot; we really had to make space for his voice. I think that was the key that earlier on we understood. Like, if this is gonna work, we need to keep it stripped and focus on Abel’s voice… We’ve probably heard [“Moth To A Flame”] 6,000 times, and it still gets me. I was in the car on my way to the studio and I was like… When you actually cry to your own music… it doesn’t happen with every song, but when it does, that’s like a mind-fudge, like a warp zone. I’m crying to a song like somebody else made it, but actually it’s us who made it. So it’s unreal. It’s an unreal feeling when you can connect with your own song even though you’ve heard it 10,000 times during the process, you should be tired of it. Like, if it still gives you those emotions after 10,000 times, then maybe it’s good.“

The music video for “Moth To A Flame” was uploaded to The Weeknd’s official YouTube channel on the 22nd October 2021. Directed by Alexander Wessely, the video shows The Weeknd in a dark room, interchanged with videos of bare bodies caressing and touching one another, with The Weeknd at the centre of the crowd of bodies. In only 5 days, the video had received over 7.7 million views.

Read the lyrics to “Moth To A Flame” here. 

*All information correct at the time of publishing.