Grammy award winner The Weeknd headlined the Super Bowl LV Halftime show over the weekend. He performed a medley of hit songs and grabbed a lot of social media attention quickly.
Overall, he did pretty good for a performance that took place during a pandemic. But it wasn’t the best. These performances are always anticipated, so artists are always expected to go above and beyond.
He started off by hopping out of a car in a sparkly red blazer and then sitting under the stadium sign and fireworks. The show did not start on the field as they typically do, but instead, he had the stage set up next to the Raymond James Stadium pirate ship.
That was pretty interesting to see. The reasoning for this though according to The Weeknd was to keep everyone as safe as possible with the ongoing pandemic.
He was surrounded by backup dancers who were layered on the stage.
The Weeknd included some of his old smash hits like “The Hills” and “Earned It,” which was very much appreciated by fans of his earlier tunes.
During the performance, some pretty odd but interesting interactions happened with the camera.
When “Can’t Feel My Face” came on, there was a moment when The Weeknd grabs the camera and viewers get a sense of it being a first-person view.
Some funny faces were made that quickly made it to social media platforms and became memes overnight.
Throughout the performance, he is joined with a larger amount of backup dancers wearing almost the same attire as him except with their faces wrapped up in bandages.
It has been said that a lot of those dancers are local small dancers who were given this great opportunity by The Weeknd to perform alongside him at such a big event.
That was amazing to hear about and shows the type of person he is.
The last few songs were performed on the field and the show ended with his most recent hit “Blinding Lights.”
The field was filled with dancers.
Some might be a little upset to see that the TikTok dance for this song was not incorporated into the performance.
He did not include a special guest to come out and perform with him as most Super Bowl performers tend to do.
It has also been revealed that The Weeknd used millions of his own money to bring his performance to life.
Props will be given where deserved, though. He did not lip sync, as most artists are known to do during the half time performance.
Of course, due to circumstances, I do believe that many resources and ideas were limited for the artists. The Weekend did state when teasing the performance that he and his team were trying to keep the players and workers safe.
Although this performance did not beat last year’s performance, some slack should be cut as he was snubbed from many nominations this year and had to perform during one of the most unusual and unfortunate times for live performers.
