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The pop star will be performing during the Super Bowl Halftime Show on Sunday.
To promote his latest album After Hours, The Weeknd has regularly released music videos, made red carpet appearances, and attended award shows with his face faux bloodied and in various states of bandaging before ultimately revealing a whole new, dramatically surgically-enhanced visage in the video for his latest single, "Save Your Tears," courtesy of some very good prosthetics. The pop star has remained mum on the topic of his shifting appearance, but in a new interview with Variety ahead of his performance during the Super Bowl Halftime Show on Sunday, the singer—whose real name is Abel Tesfaye—finally revealed the meaning behind his press cycle performance art.
“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,” Tesfaye explains. What started out as just “a really bad night” in Las Vegas in the album's first music video “Blinding Lights” becomes “a progression and we watch The Character’s storyline hit heightened levels of danger and absurdity as his tale goes on.” But beyond that, the singer remained rather evasive about his intentions behind altering his appearance and when he decides to embody this character he created.
In a new Super Bowl ad released on Tuesday, Tesfaye appears once again looking completely normal without a bloody piece of gauze in sight. When asked what fans should read into the fact he's making himself increasingly unattractive while promoting his biggest album to date, he replied, “I suppose you could take that being attractive isn’t important to me but a compelling narrative is.” And in terms of why he chose to put on this persona in the first place, he added, “Why not play with the character and the artist and let those lines blur and move around?” It seems those lines are even starting to blur for the artist as when asked if he was in character right now, Tesfaye replied, “I don't know, I'd have to ask him.”
