He felt it was important to revisit his demons and let his guard down on After Hours. "I didn't want to, but sometimes you try to run away from who you are, and you always get back to that place. By the end of this album, you realise, 'I'm not that person.' I was, but I'm growing and wiser, and I'm gonna have children someday, and I'm going to tell them they don't have to be that person," he explained. "You could hear the vulnerability in the music before, but there was such a shield, such a f*ck you to the world, and now I'm very comfortable with letting the world know that I can be that way."
"Faith" is about the darkest time in The Weeknd's life. "So, ["Faith"] is about the darkest time of my entire life, around 2013, 2014. I was getting really, really tossed up and going through a lot of personal stuff. I got arrested in Vegas. It was a real rock-star era, which I'm not really proud of," he said. "You hear sirens at the end the song — that's me in the back of the cop car, that moment. I always wanted to make that song but I never did, and this album felt like the perfect time, because [the character] is looking for an escape after a heartbreak or whatever. I wanted to be that guy again — the 'Heartless' guy who hates God and is losing his f*cking religion and hating what he looks like in the mirror, so he keeps getting high. That's who this song is."
He got Elton John's seal of approval for "Scared to Live" (which features an interpolation of Elton's "Your Song"). "Before I played it for Elton, I was like, 'F*ck, I hope he likes it.' But he was freakin' — he was like, 'Mate, you're gonna be doing this for a long time!'" Elton added, "[The Weeknd] has his own unique artistic voice — that's the hallmark of a genuinely great, long-term artist. I'm utterly thrilled that the DNA for 'Your Song' has found its way into 'Scared to Live.' It's the greatest compliment a songwriter can ever receive."