House of Balloons is the first of three critically acclaimed mixtapes released for free download by The Weeknd, which was released on March 21, 2011. This 9 track project was released under XO and Island Records
House of Balloons, along with Thursday and Echoes of Silence, was later remastered as the Trilogy album in 2012, with one extra song on each tape. The bonus track for this mixtape was his twenty-eighth song, “Twenty Eight”.
The project, primarily produced by Illangelo and Doc McKinney, pushed the boundaries of R&B, with its influences of trip-hop, indie rock and dream pop and incorporations of electronic/urban genres. Because of this, it is widely considered one of the most influential R&B projects in recent years.
The mixtape describes a life filled with drugs and sex and The Weeknd himself described it as “anti-everything.”
House of Balloons is actually a real place located at 65 Spencer Ave, Toronto, and in an interview with Rolling stone, he explains that he chose the title, House of Balloons, because that’s where he first lived after he dropped out of school at 17, saying:
We’d throw these shitty parties and have girls over, and we’d try to make it celebratory, so we’d have balloons.
The Weeknd “gave up” almost half of this mixtape to Drake to be used in his Take Care album—
I gave up almost half of my album, it’s hard. I will always be thankful, if it wasn’t for the light he shined on me, who knows where I’d be. And everything happens for a reason. You never know what I would say if this success wasn’t in front of me now
— but only 5 of the songs were used: “Shot For Me,” “Practice,” “Marvin’s Room,” and he featured on two tracks: “Crew Love” and
“The Ride.”
On March 21, 2021, the tenth anniversary of the mixtape’s release, it was finally added to streaming services.
He talked about this in an interview with GQ 10 years after the mixtape’s release:
I don’t know. Maybe there is a deeper issue with that, but I feel like with me it’s never been about the artist and the image of the artist. With House of Balloons, nobody knew what I looked like. And I felt like it was the most unbiased reaction you can get to the music, because you couldn’t put a face to it. Especially R&B, which is a genre that is heavily influenced by how the artist looks.