Portishead don't like The Weeknd but The Weeknd still likes Portishead

As Frank Ocean put it perfectly in ‘Bad Religion’ from last year’s Channel Orange, ”Unrequited love, To me it’s nothing but a one-man cult”. Or maybe The Weeknd should remember that old saying: “Never meet your heroes”.

Earlier, the R&B musician paid homage to Portishead track ‘Machine Gun’ on his new single ‘Belong To The World’, the video to which dropped earlier today.

Portishead leader Geoff Barrow, however, didn’t take too well to it, suggesting that Abel Tesfaye had used to sample without authorised clearance. He wrote on Twitter that “when someone asks to sample you and you refuse they should have the respect as a fellow artist to not use it”, before calling the song a “load of bollox”.

Rather ironically timed though, is this new cover interview with Complex for their August/September issue, in which Tesfaye talks about his love for the Bristol group, even going as far saying he wrote them a letter telling them as much.

The interview reads:

I heard Portishead drums on “Belong to the World.”
Yeah, that was the inspiration behind that. I wrote a letter to the producers of Portishead and let them know this album is inspired by them.

The entire Kiss Land album?
Most of it. I find a sound and run with it. It varies from Stevie Nicks to Genesis and Phil Collins. The production is very cinematic for me, and R&B was never cinematic like that.

Yep, slightly awkward. Read the full interview here, and watch The Weeknd’s new video below: