There's barely a pop hook to speak of here-just a beguiling, harrowing soundscape that's impossible to forget.' Time named 'The Hills' the fifth-best song of 2015. Billboard ranked 'The Hills' at number 10 on its year-end list for 2015: 'Number one hits aren't supposed to be this sonically adventurous and dark, but The Weeknd can do no wrong in 2015. The same magazine also included 'Earned It' and 'Can't Feel My Face' on the same list. Rolling Stone ranked 'The Hills' at number 11 on its year-end list to find the 50 best songs of 2015. She continues, writing that 'the familiarity of Tesfaye's strained vibrato makes him the inheritor of musical legacies that Abyssinia has birthed for generations.' In a review for The New York Post, Hardeep Phull wrote that 'The 'Fifty Shades of Grey' fans who were turned on to Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) through his hit 'Earned It' are in for a shock, because he is in brilliantly sinister form on his new track.' Continuing, Phull goes on to say that 'When it comes to being a Don Juan with a dark side, this guy makes Christian Grey look like Ned Flanders.' In an analytical piece for Pitchfork, Hannah Giorgis called 'The Hills' 'a dark, almost discordant meditation on lust, drugs, and fame' while noting that 'to those familiar with his repertoire, the only twist in 'The Hills' is how it ends: as the final chords fade, a woman's voice, syrupy and sedate, closes with a lullaby of sorts-not in English, but in Amharic, the primary language of Ethiopia and the Weeknd's own native tongue.' She goes on to trace the song's melodic and lyrical origins to the Ethiopian diaspora. James Shotwell of Under the Gun wrote that the single fits well within Abel's prior output, but that 'Abel's ability to create something altogether hypnotic regardless of production never ceases to amaze.' Brian Mansfield of USA Today noted that 'when a song takes its hook from a horror film- Wes Craven's 1977 cult classic The Hills Have Eyes-you know there's bound to be trouble.' 'The Hills' received critical acclaim, with most reviewers praising the Weeknd's return to form after his pop-oriented direction with ' Earned It'. That's probably the most important song in my career because it is the Weeknd and the irony being it was the most successful song that I had ever done. It's the perfect marriage of that.' While promoting After Hours, the Weeknd claimed to have recorded 67 versions of the song.

'The Hills' was an opportunity for us to go back to the classical, original the Weeknd moments of our first mixtapes that I coвЂ“produced and mixed in their entirety, and then bringing that into a new context, with a pop arrangement and chords in a faster tempo. Producer Illangelo stated 'I'm very optimistic and positive with anything I put my energy towards, so for me, Abel's success now is what I imagined it always should have been. The vocals in the song span from C3 to E в™5. The song is written in the key of C minor in common time with a tempo of 113 beats per minute. In May 2019, 'The Hills' was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling more than ten million copies, making it the Weeknd's first diamond-certified record. A music video for the song was released on May 27, 2015, directed by Grant Singer. It also made the top 10 in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.

In the United States, the song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, replacing his own ' Can't Feel My Face'. In the singer's native Canada, the song peaked at number one. 'The Hills' was a critical success, appearing on several year-end lists.

It was released on May 27, 2015, as the second single from his second studio album, Beauty Behind the Madness (2015). ' The Hills' is a song by Canadian singer the Weeknd.

Ethiopian old music remix