After teasing it months ago, The Weeknd has released his cover of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ for HBO’s The Idol.
The Weeknd’s rendition of Lennon comes ahead of the fourth episode of the controversial show. The Canadian musician stars as Tedros in The Idol, and created it alongside Sam Levinson and Reza Fahim. He first teased the cover of ‘Jealous Guy’ in April, sharing a snippet on Instagram Live. He also performed the song live in Oslo, Norway, earlier in the week.
The Weeknd had planned to release a soundtrack album for The Idol on June 30th but has instead opted to share tracks from the series in weekly instalments. Arriving with the debut episode, he shared ‘The Lure (Main Theme)’ and co-star Lily-Rose Depp’s ‘World Class Sinner / I’m a Freak’. For the second episode, he released ‘Family’, ‘Double Fantasy’ and Mike Dean’s ‘Devil’s Paradise’.
The third episode’s soundtrack featured ‘A Lesser Man’, ‘Take Me Back’, and the Moses Sumney song ‘Get It B4’. The Weekend has also released another single from The Idol, ‘Popular’. Now, to mark the fourth episode, alongside ‘Jealous Guy’, he has arrived with ‘One of the Girls’ with Depp and Blackpink’s Jennie and ‘Fill the Void’, by Depp and Ramsey.
In May, details of some of the sexually explicit scenes in The Idol were described in an expose in Rolling Stone. One source detailed: “It was like any rape fantasy that any toxic man would have in the show — and then the woman comes back for more because it makes her music better”.
In response, when speaking at a press conference at Cannes Film Festival after the first two episodes premiered on May 22nd, Lily-Rose Depp called the backlash to the show “disheartening”. Responding to the critics, she said: “I just wanna say that it’s always sad and disheartening to hear mean, false things about someone you care about, and it wasn’t my experience shooting the show”.
Listen to The Weeknd’s ‘Jealous Guy’ below.
