Watch The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Half-time Performance
The Weeknd was the star performer of this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, following in the footsteps of previous headliners including Bruce Springsteen, Prince, and Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, who performed at last year’s show.
Abel Tesfaye, who performs under the moniker The Weeknd, became the first Canadian artist to headline the American football game. He kicked off his set with his hit, Starboy, and played the 14-minute-set with a mix of recent songs and tracks from across his career, including Blinding Lights and Can’t Feel My Face.
The Weeknd had confirmed ahead of the event that there would be no special guests joining him for the show, after rumours circulated that he would be joined by Daft Punk, who he worked with on his 2016 record, Starboy. In an interview with NFL Network he stated that “there wasn’t any room to fit it in the narrative, in the story I was telling in the performance.” He also discussed the fact he added his own money to make the performance exactly how he envisaged it.
The performance featured an astonishing cityscape all lit up in neon, with The Weeknd emerging from a sports car and sitting on the end of what looked like a tall building. The stage, which featured a massive choir standing in among buildings split open and he took to the stage.
Elsewhere he performed his hit Can’t Feel My Face from within a hall of mirrors.
A host of dancers also took to the stage dressed in the outfit of black suit, red jacket and faces covered in bandages in a nod to The Weeknd’s character for his fourth album After Hours, which the set no doubt also nodded to.
In an interview with Variety, The Weeknd said, “The significance of the entire head bandages is reflecting on the absurd culture of Hollywood celebrity and people manipulating themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated. It’s all a progression and we watch The Character’s storyline hit heightened levels of danger and absurdity as his tale goes on.”
You can watch the performance below.