Are The Weeknd’s My Dear Melancholy Songs About Bella Hadid?

The Weeknd might have made a mistake. Well, at least that’s how he puts it in his new heartbreak EP, My Dear Melancholy, mostly about his failed relationship with Selena Gomez and his enduring fondness for Bella Hadid. While the songs that explicitly reference Gomez are bitter and scornful, the ones referencing Hadid are wistful, impassioned, and slightly NSFW. Ahead, read the lyrics that seem a whole lot like a plea for reconciliation.

“Try Me”

• “You’re the best I ever had / Baby girl, remind me.”
• “You’re lookin’ grown since the last time I looked at you / It might have been, been about a couple months / But I just got the picture that you texted to me.”

The Weeknd hasn’t had many relationships in the public eye, but here it seems he’s classifying Hadid as “the best” he’s ever had — especially since we now know his post-breakup feelings about Gomez. It also has been “a couple months” since The Weeknd last saw Hadid: he was photographed leaving her apartment in November of 2017. As for the picture he received via text message, well, we’re probably better off not knowing.

“Wasted Times”

• “Wasted times I spent with someone else / She wasn’t even half of you.”
• “And now I’m askin’, who do you belong to now? / Who you give that love to now? / Who you pullin’ up on? / Who you gettin’ sprung for now? / And what they got that I ain’t got? ‘Cause I got a lot.”
• “These girls only want you when you’re winnin’ / But you’ve been with me from the beginnin’ / And I know right now that we’re not talkin’ / I hope you know this d*ck is still an option.”
• “You were equestrian, so ride it like a champion.”

“Wasted Times” is a doozy, and perhaps the song that most explicitly references Hadid. The Weeknd starts by taking a jab at Gomez (“She wasn’t even half of you”), and then inquires about Hadid’s current relationship status, since she’s been pretty private about that following their breakup in 2016. In the subsequent verse, he acknowledges that Hadid was with him at the start of his mainstream success and proceeds to just lay it all out there. The most obvious reference, however, is that steamy “equestrian” line: the model has been an avid horseback rider all her life and even had dreams of competing in the Olympics.