Most of us will never know what it's like to be an internationally famous recording artist. But we've heard the cautionary tales, we've seen the train wrecks: fame can be a destructive force. Divorce, rehab, worse. Yet no apocryphal tale could prepare readers for the horror faced by an innocent man from Toronto who just wanted to watch Sam Smith celebrate. In a new cover story at Rolling Stone, The Weeknd recalls a Grammy afterparty held for the British singer in Bel-Air. Abel had yet to leverage his major pop breakthrough, so he was surprised and flattered when Taylor Swift approached and told him that one of his songs had become one of her favorites. But things took a turn for the weird:

"[Swift] actually schooled me on my own shit," the singer says. "She was like, 'I've been listening to 'The Morning' [from House of Balloons] for years—it's one of my favorite songs ever!' I mean, she might have just Googled it. But she seemed genuine." The conversation went on for about 15 minutes--with a bizarre twist. "The whole time she was talking, she was kind of, like, petting my hair?" the Weeknd recalls. "I think she was just drawn to it—she must have been a little gone off a few drinks. And of course I'm not going to be like, 'Hey, can you stop?' I mean, it felt good! But when she started petting my hair, that's when I was like, 'I definitely need a drink.'"

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