Canadian pop star The Weeknd changed his name on social media Monday to Abel Tesfaye, his birth name.
Tesfaye opted to keep his handles on Instagram and Twitter as The Weeknd and made no changes to his Facebook account at all.
It's not clear why Tesfaye, 33, made the change. In an interview with W Magazine this month, he said he's preparing to reinvent himself as a musician.
"I’m going through a cathartic path right now,” he told the magazine. “It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close the Weeknd chapter. I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd. And I will. Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn.”
Tesfaye said the album he's working on might be his "last hurrah as The Weeknd."
"This is something that I have to do," he said. "As The Weeknd, I’ve said everything I can say."
Tesfaye's team said there will be no further comment on the social media name change.
Tesfaye, the "Blinding Lights" and "Die for You" singer, was named the most popular artist in the world this year following analysis of Spotify data. Guinness World Records awarded Tesfaye the title, adding that he set two records: most monthly listeners on Spotify, 111.4 million as of March 20, and first artist to reach 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Guinness credited Tesfaye's surging streaming figures with the release of the "Die for You" remix featuring Ariana Grande, which went viral on TikTok.
The song was originally released as part of his "Starboy" album in 2016.
The only other solo male musician to have achieved the feat is Michael Jackson, according to Guinness World Records.
