Where’s all the blood and carnage?
Weeknd decided to play it safe on one of the biggest pop culture stages on Sunday, during their performance at the Super Bowl 2021 break.
The multifaceted 30-year-old decided that his own face was good enough for his big live show – definitely not pre-recorded – rather than the strange prosthetics and makeup he used during the release of his latest album.
Supported by a chorus of gospel singers, the “Starboy” singer began his performance by strolling through a series of labyrinths under the stage. When it came to their 2015 hit “I Can’t Feel My Face”, dozens of doppelgangers with bandages were dancing around them. Finally they risked with something strange.
Later, the entire field was filled with masked backups as he sang his famous TikTok dance jam, “Blinded by the Light”.
During their sensual anthem “50 Shades of Gray”, “Earned It”, the stage lit up their now characteristic porn stache – complemented by a sexy wink from the camera. That’s the most dramatic thing that happened to the singer’s ever-changing face during the break.
Still, The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, wore his red suit, his trademark, honoring his “transformation,” said the suit’s creator, Richfresh designer Patrick Henry. His shiny range suit, with mother-of-pearl buttons, had been kept simple. “Everything is done in such a way that it stays very close when it is stopped, but it can still move because Abel likes to move.”
In the year since he released his fourth studio album, “After Hours”, he has been presenting more radical versions of what he calls “The Character”. It all started with a bloody face at the end of “Blinding Lights” in January 2020, but it turned into blood even more confused with his short film “After Hours” that came in March.
Between April and August, his “character” was even more injured, showing horrible bruises, as well as blood and bandages. In November, Weeknd completely covered the face with gauze for the American Music Awards.
He followed the bloody face with a completely new “plastic surgery” look – obtained by prosthetics – to “Save Your Tears” in January.
However, in the Super Bowl commercials, the singer relied on his real face, apparently abandoning the twisted persona that fans kept talking about. But he had time to explain everything before the big game to those who have been intrigued for months.
“The meaning of all the bandages on the head is reflected in the absurd culture of Hollywood celebrities and in people who manipulate themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated,” he explained to Variety. “It’s all a progression and we see the character’s storyline reach high levels of danger and absurdity as his story continues.”
He added that fans can “understand that being attractive is not important to me, but an attractive narrative is”, and even explained why he is going back and forth between himself and “The Character”, as he called it.
“Why not play with the character and the artist and let those lines blur and move?”