The Weeknd has been finding more and more graceful ways to lower the spotlight for almost its entire decade, becoming immeasurably famous and popular, retaining a cool, skeptical and effective removal of the harsh, sometimes stupid vicious light of fame.
However, on stage during the Super Bowl halftime show, there is not much you can do to hide. It is a region that pushes the nuance, the intention of the sandpaper. It was lively and heavily researched. For someone whose songs often delve deep into traumatic and challenging topics, but who shine so brightly and convincingly that it’s easy to miss the fragile soul from within, it’s an unlikely, almost vulnerable place to find yourself.
Which probably explains why the Weeknd rejected the terms of the Super Bowl LV performance at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.,. What would normally be a hyperchoreographic spectacle with countless moving parts was rather something more focused and sometimes disturbingly intimate. Although his music tends towards the maximalist, the Weeknd finds different ways to make the performance look small, a kind of secret that is whispered in front of an audience that is 100 million tones ahead.
In a performance clearly designed for home use, he focuses on the cameras. Behind him, an orchestra and choir alternated between a neon cityscape, and he was often surrounded by dancers – their faces connected, in keeping with the fame-skeptical iconography of his recent music videos – but often the Weeknd stood alone. His eye contact was intense. When he danced, he did so mostly in isolation. In the midst of a pyrotechnic affair, he was there and kept his own time.
This was also partly due to the unique circumstances of the year’s event: a large-scale case that was re-introduced with pandemic restrictions in mind. Instead of the usual stage set-up – put together in midfield and then disassembled quickly after the show – the Weeknd performed mainly from the stands and only descended to the field in the last few minutes of his set.
Wearing a bright red jacket and spectator shoes with an all-black ensemble, he sometimes looked like a cabaret mayor, a master of ceremonies for a space age. He sticks to the biggest of his many big hits. ‘Starboy’ was alive, and ‘The Hills’ had a majestic cattle.
After ‘The Hills’, he turns to something more peculiar, walks into an illuminated labyrinth and performs ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ amidst a scrum-faced appearance. The camera was hand-held and unsteady, communicating a glamorous chaos to which this event usually does not pay attention.
After that, he tempered the mood with some of his biggest hits in the tent: the sunshine “I Feel It Coming”, the big “Save Your Tears”, and then “Earned It”, his theatrical ballad from the “Fifty Shades of Gray “soundtrack.
There may not be a better moment for the Weeknd to be the main show anymore: After almost a year of avoiding other people, who better to set the terms of public engagement than pop music’s biggest hermit? That said, it’s scary this week to see him stick his head out of the shadows, busy with a short, not-so-comfortable news conference, and yuk-yuking in a comedy sketch with James Corden.
There are some responsibilities of this level of fame that are non-negotiable. The Weeknd asked at the news conference if he would temper his songs or performances in any way, given how impeccable and graphic his recent videos were, “we will definitely keep this PG for the families.”
That is to say, no mischief has been injected at one of the most beautiful, watched and studied stages of pop music – take, for example, the raw carnal provocations of Prince’s rain-covered performance of Prince in 2007, or the political politics of Beyoncé’s invasion. Coldplay’s hilarious play in 2016, or MIA’s middle finger in 2012.
As promised, he mostly kept it PG, although he threw a sly grin and a small sashay from the hip during ‘I Feel It Coming’, and the scattered chaos during ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ suggested that it was very sinister things than could be imagined. His recent music videos have focused on the grotesqueness of celebrity worship, but there has been a nod to that narrative, but largely aside.
This is the second halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, in an arrangement struck while the league is trying to address the consequences of dealing with Colin Kaepernick’s protest against racial justice. For the past year, the NFL has apparently always been in a crisis-response mode. This season has been challenged throughout by the impact of the coronavirus.
Before the match, rock-soul singer HER performed ‘America the Beautiful’ and injected a princess-minded guitar filigree. And the national anthem was a duet between the phenomenally gifted soul singer Jazmine Sullivan and the country stoicism Eric Church, wearing a purple moto-like jacket to emphasize the political and cultural middle ground. The performance – solid, sometimes impressive – was so clearly strived for.
In the Weeknd, the NFL opted for one of the few impeccable pop stars of the past decade, a constant hitmaker with an ear for contemporary production and a love for the grandeur and brilliance of the greatest pop of the 1980s.
Only during the last few minutes, when he finally appeared on the field, did he admit how far he had come. Playing at that moment was a snippet from “House of Balloons”, the murky title track of his extremely murky debut mix band, released a decade ago. At that point, the Weeknd was a total coding, a criminal in Toronto with an ethereal voice and no interest in sharing himself with the rest of the world.
This nod to his past was quick – a nod to longtime fans – and it made way for “Blinding Lights,” his exuberant 2019 hit, which topped the Hot 100 for four weeks. It’s a wonderful song that evokes an idyllic future and unleashes audience memory of mega – pop’s glory years. On the field, he was surrounded by hundreds of Weeknd dancers. In the beginning, he moved with them in final step. But when the song swells, and the dancers begin to swarm in strange patterns, the Weeknd moves in its own rhythm, holding the camera’s gaze, alone in the midst of the chaos.