In contrast to Taylor Swift’s meteorite-like crash touchdown within the sweaty metropolis of Toronto, there have been no friendship bead-wearing police horses at The Weeknd’s first displaying within the Six.
As an alternative, a extra subdued air surrounded Rogers Centre as followers funnelled in: Low-key Starboy tracks warbling into the 30 C drippingly-wet air blanketing the stadium within the coronary heart of The Weeknd’s hometown.
However that does not imply a scarcity of pleasure, regardless of the climate.
“God rattling, it is sizzling,” Canadian producer and DJ Kaytranada even exclaimed, towelling himself off onstage throughout a well-done if not earth-shattering opening.
That was as sweltering followers on the first of 4 sold-out nights within the 50,000-seat venue braved the warmth in requisitely darkish garments to match the R&B famous person infamously darkish music.
Only a day earlier than, Mayor Olivia Chow dubbed the previous days “The Weeknd weekend.” That was as a result of, she stated, “Abel (The Weeknd) Tesfaye represents the most effective of our metropolis.” The Scarborough-raised artist additionally acquired a key to town.
And it was all simply earlier than viewers members, desperate to expertise what is usually nonetheless described as a once-in-a-lifetime live performance expertise, have been uncharacteristically chatty with journalists — throwing themselves into on-camera interviews as an alternative of ready for the insistent coaxing of harried producers.
“Everybody right here, we’re The Weeknd,” a fan named Perry instructed CBC Information. “He represents Canada.”
The Weeknd seems alongside his robe-wearing backup dancers. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
However as Tesfaye took the stage, the seemingly incongruous mixture of feelings immediately made sense. Decked in a black gown encrusted with glittering gold rhinestones and a golden half-mask, you would see he embodied that caustic mixture of the charismatic and subdued that, for anybody else, wouldn’t slot in the identical individual on the identical time.
As he has confirmed since releasing nameless and unsettling dance-themed mixtapes within the 2010s all the way in which to this seemingly final tour below The Weeknd moniker, that is the house the place Tesfaye thrives. Whereas not retiring from music, he plans to now not carry out below the identify he has grow to be well-known for.
A return house
Shortly barrelling by means of basic tracks The Abyss to Wake Me As much as After Hours, he was flanked by equally masked, enrobed backup dancers — transferring in unison round a slowly spinning golden statue of an enormous, nude girl (think about a feminine Oscars statuette, however with seen nipples).
They stood beneath massive gold rings, in entrance of a mocked up golden skyline of a crumbling metropolis. Even Tesfaye’s microphone was gold, a very heavy-handed metaphor that, early on, he stumbled chaotically towards.
Whereas roughly 30 girls walked in sync across the statue after which behind to him, and as jets of fireplace shot up 20 toes into the air, Tesfaye held his fingers as much as the mic as if in prayer. None of them needed to dance and even transfer a lot to earn the deafening applause that got here subsequent, as Tesfaye revealed the tiniest little bit of his face, barely peaking excessive of the masks.
Followers within the entrance row take heed to The Weeknd open his four-night run at Rogers Centre. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
“Properly that is a heat welcome house, is not it?” he requested to a different roar.
It wasn’t the final name out to his hometown. Later, he remarked the stadium is the place he used to return to look at Blue Jays video games “as a little bit child,” set free a protracted and prolonged “Toronto” in the midst of his monitor Sacrifice and managed to sneak each CN Tower and Rogers Centre references into São Paulo.
However the focus was the gold, the ceremony and the performative reverence of it. The impact is spectacular if eerie. A consummate musical skilled with 4 Grammys below his belt and extra Junos than anybody however Anne Murray, Tesfaye is aware of easy methods to set a scene.
He additionally is aware of easy methods to sing, and — greater than that — carry out. He by no means failed to guide the tens of hundreds of cheering attendants in tune or simply rapturous applause. All of it gives the look of some club-themed spiritual ceremony: A gigantic and enormously budgeted cultic worship service, besides right here the god is hedonism, intercourse and all of the extra outrageous scenes of Wolf of Wall Road.
In fact, that is by design — each why The Weeknd can outline himself as a generational intercourse image with out gyrating and even revealing a sliver of his physique below saggy robes and ostensibly why he is selecting to go away the schtick behind after this tour. In his exhibits and music, he is taking part in a membership child, fame-obsessed semi-satirical character invented approach again in his debut mixtape Home of Balloons days — itself a masks, Tesfaye defined in a 2013 reddit howeverhe selected to be able to cover his identify and, by extension, himself.
The Weeknd’s present featured sometimes evocative, if complicated, imagery. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Vainness and nihilism
In individual, all of it comes collectively like a magic trick. At a Weeknd live performance, we’re each sick of materialism, and sick of being sick of it. We’re letting go of each inhibition, forgetting love, revelling in intercourse and giving up on self-control. It is all an announcement about nihilism, you see. Or possibly, it isn’t.
“It appears exorbitant when all of it ends. A pointless, uncomfortable train from an artist who believes vainness means no stone of extra might be left unturned,” music journalist Hanif Abdurraqib wrote of a 2013 Weeknd present in his guide They Cannot Kill Us Till They Kill Us.
“The Weeknd tells the identical story: It is by no means about love, however then once more, how can it’s about something however love, even when the love is simply the love you’ve got in your personal ravenous wishes.”
How a lot the separate entity of The Weeknd exists for Tesfaye to discover and mock his most self-destructive tendencies — as an alternative of simply revelling in them — is not precisely clear. You’d’ve been laborious pressed to seek out any hints of displeasure from the seemingly ecstatic Tesfaye on Sunday. He hit hits outdated and new out of the park, and was grinning ear-to-ear as he held the microphone to just about fainting followers, screaming out the advert libs of Out of Time.
Nonetheless, it is maybe a wierd message to model, as Chow did, the most effective of town — and a wierd one to have drawn as many barely five-foot middle-schoolers as Sunday’s all-ages present did.
On the identical time, it is a theme that has supplied diminishing returns. There was the 2022 Los Angeles live performance during which Tesfaye infamously misplaced his voice resulting from stress. Then the ill-fated sequence The Idol, a Tesfaye-fronted sequence concerning the relentless pursuit of fame that was broadly panned by critics and even The Weeknd himself.
After which there was Hurry Up Tomorrow, the absurdly, incomprehensibly silly filmic tie-in of his most up-to-date album. Meant to additional discover his falling-out-of-love with The Weeknd after the L.A. present, as an alternative it solely managed to compete with Megalopolis as essentially the most offensively boring film to premiere within the final 12 months.
However maybe these failures have been as a result of Tesfaye was performing to the improper crowd, on the improper stage. His messy, introspective and imprecise metaphors work higher in tune lyrics than dialogue; higher sung in entrance of a surprising pyrotechnic flame and fireworks present than on a movie display screen.
If Sunday’s present proved something, it was that. And even when on the within he is accomplished with The Weeknd, it proved he can actually nonetheless faux it.
