The Weeknd Get Down Get Up Again
The Super Basin Halftime show is the biggest phase on World for a musician, and the Weeknd made the most of his 12-odd minutes on Sunday night, delivering a tightly choreographed, technologically dazzling set that non but lived up to some of the near iconic performances of the past, it also touched on songs and images from all across his decade-long career — and he did information technology under strict pandemic restrictions, before a stadium that was approximately one-tenth total.
In the week leading upwards to the game, the Weeknd had said that his main stage would be located in the stands — although he would apply the field every bit well — and that it would continue the cryptic bad-dark-in-Las-Vegas storyline that has accompanied all of the videos and TV performances effectually his blockbuster latest album, "Afterwards Hours." All of those things proved truthful (although the connection to the storyline was even more than ambiguous than always), merely references to previous albums were nowadays as well. And although he appeared in videos and TV performances late last yr with his head swathed in bandages or with exaggerated plastic surgery — a visual statement he explained exclusively to Multifariousness last calendar week — he looked natural and sported just a mustache and a light beard, along with a pair of square sunglasses that he shortly discarded.
The operation centered around an enormous multi-level wall-similar stage, designed as a neon-lit theatrical cityscape, assembled beneath the stadium's behemothic video screen/scoreboard. It occupied an unabridged end of the stadium; co-ordinate to his manager, the Weeknd spent some $7 1000000 of his own money on the performance. The wall was lit up with signage and lights that recalled both the Las Vegas setting of many of the "After Hours" videos as well equally the ruby-low-cal-district-inspired stage set for the Weeknd's bout behind his 2013 album "Kiss Land." His band, led by musical managing director Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin), were arrayed across the superlative of the wall.
The testify opened with the Weeknd, dressed in a glittery version of his at present-familiar "Subsequently Hours" carmine jacket and black pants, seated in a fake sports machine at the top of the cityscape. Equally ominous choral music played, he got out and walked around the fake buildings, sitting down on a neon-lit platform every bit a huge, sinister-looking creature in a white robe with glowing crimson eyes was lowered from a indicate in a higher place him. It joined several dozen dancers, seated further down the cityscape, who were all wearing billowing white robes and helmets with blood-red lights for eyes.
As his hitting "Starboy" began, the two halves of the cityscape parted and the Weeknd emerged in a wash of brilliant lights while the dancers performed robotic moves to the song, looking like some kind of evil choir (and actually recalled the robots from the video for Herbie Hancock's 1983 hit "Rockit"). Every bit the music segued quickly into his 2013 hit "The Hills," the Weeknd went back into the brightly lit hallway behind the wall, which was filled with illuminated words — "Feel," "Skillful," "Nothing," "Lonely," "Hours" (nil is random in the Weeknd'southward world). He sang closely into the camera, which wobbled to create a disorienting effect. As the music segued rapidly into his 2016 hit "I Can't Feel My Face," several dancers, wearing "After Hours" red suits and with their heads wrapped in bandages, appeared in the hallways too, sometimes stumbling around in a disoriented fashion simply also snapping to attention at times (the song, although from an before album, too created another layer of pregnant for the bandages).
The Weeknd performs at the Super Bowl halftime show
Suddenly, he was back on the master stage for his 2016 hitting "I Feel It Coming," and again singing directly into the camera as fireworks launched at the opposite cease of the field.
In fact, that tactic was perhaps the most striking difference between the Weeknd's Super Bowl performance and all the ones that came before: In the absence of an audience on the field, he simply sang to the television audience, creating a greater sense of intimacy than the stadium-sized halftime performance unremarkably has.
Every bit he sang, a giant backdrop appeared on the huge video screen at the superlative of the cityscape, depicting a nighttime sky consummate with a fake moon. That segment of the functioning continued with "Save Your Tears" — featuring an audio-visual guitarist wearing a glittery mask — the get-go song he performed from "Afterwards Hours," and and so his earlier hitting "Earned It." The choir had doffed their white robes and were now wearing glittering jackets and miming playing violins.
The Weeknd performs at the Super Bowl halftime show
During the brief interlude that segued into the concluding segment of the performance, dozens of millions of viewers were confronted with something that many wizening new moving ridge fans would observe most impossible to imagine: hearing Siouxsie & the Banshees during the Super Basin halftime performance. The Weeknd sampled the British postpunk group'south 1980 song "Happy House" for the song "Loftier for This" on his debut mixtape, merely here it was but an interlude leading into the finale, which of course was his 2019 boom, "Blinding Lights."
The Weeknd was accompanied by more than a hundred dancers dressed as the caput-bandaged character, who filled the entire field and moved in mechanized lock step. The Weeknd sang the song while walking downwards the center of the field, surrounded past the dancers, who were alternately marching or swirling in circles. He finished as a barrage of fireworks exploded in the heaven above him, and walked slowly off the field every bit the dancers laid down.
Each yr, even before the Super Basin halftime performance is over, the court of public opinion begins ranking the prove in the long pantheon of classic ones: Prince, Michael Jackson, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga — and, for some, the Weekend'south proclaimed favorite, Diana Ross — are usually office of those conversations. While information technology's unfair to compare performances musically — opinions of an artist's music are subjective, later all — information technology is fair to say that the Weeknd succeeded in staging what may have been the nigh technologically dazzling halftime functioning in history, under what were undoubtedly the most challenging conditions.
The Weeknd performs at the Super Bowl halftime show
The Weeknd Get Down Get Up Again
Source: https://variety.com/2021/music/news/the-weeknd-wows-with-hit-filled-super-bowl-halftime-show-1234902948/
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