Weeknd is feeling his own face again.
In a new Pepsi ad before his big performance at the Super Bowl break, the 30-year-old singer chose to abandon his enigmatic dressings and CGI plastic surgery, showing his real face for the first time in a long time.
The one-minute teaser for the show on February 7 shows a montage of fans enjoying their song, “Blinding Lights”, including a grocery store worker and a pool cleaner dancing to their music as if no one was watching.
At the very end, The Weeknd smiles at a security guard at a toll booth, who was interrupted because of the scam.
It is the first time in a long time that fans have been able to see his real face since The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, put on bandages as part of an aesthetic for his latest album. (And as Variety noted, it’s Pepsi’s first ad released before the Super Bowl on Sunday, which airs on CBS, and the first time the artist has participated in one.)
The Weeknd recently released a music video for their new song “Save Your Tears”, showing some disturbing changes to their face – similar to extreme plastic surgery. “But then you saw me, I took you by surprise,” he sings appropriately in the video, in which he displays a thin (and crooked) nose, swollen cheeks, swollen lips, surgical scars and other horrible new features.
Fans speculated it was a shadow of not being nominated for the 2021 Grammy Awards, but other fans took it as an affront to ex-girlfriend Bella Hadid.
However, fans should not be alarmed. The new disturbing look was achieved using prostheses and CGI. He has worked with Prosthetic Renaissance, a makeup effects studio that is taking credit for the transformation on social media.
The Weeknd has recently used his face as a statement, including a worn aesthetic in the short film “After Hours”, which has the same name as his most recent album. The video for “Blinding Lights” showed his bloody and bruised post-folded mug – a look he recreated for the MTV Video Music Awards last August. And in November, he covered his bruised face again with a surgical dressing to receive an award on stage at the American Music Awards.
As for Super Bowl LV, it is not clear what face The Weeknd will be showing.