The Weeknd feels its own face again.
In a new Pepsi announcement before his big performance in the middle of the Super Bowl, the 30-year-old singer chose to abandon his cryptic bandages and CGI plastic surgery, showing his real face for the first time in a while .
The one-minute teaser for the show, Feb. 7, features a montage of fans enjoying their song, “Blinding Lights,” which includes a grocery store worker and a pool cleaner dancing in the its melody as no one looks at it.
Right at the end, The Weeknd smiles at a toll security guard who was interrupted by furrowing the hit.
It’s the first time fans have seen his real face in a long time since The Weeknd, whose name is Abel Tesfaye, has been wearing bands as part of the aesthetics of his latest album. (And as Variety pointed out, it’s the first Pepsi ad to be released before Super Bowl Sunday, which airs on CBS, and the first time the artist participated in one).
Recently, The Weeknd released a music video for their new song “Save Your Tears,” which featured some disturbing facial alterations, similar to extreme plastic surgery. “But then you saw me, it took you by surprise,” she sings aptly in the video, where she shows a thin (and crooked) nose, swollen cheeks, swollen lips, surgical scars, and other horrible news.
Fans speculated that it was obscure not to be nominated for the 2021 Grammy Awards, but other fans saw him as a dissident of ex-girlfriend Bella Hadid.
Still, fans shouldn’t be alarmed. The new disturbing aspect was achieved through prostheses and CGI. She has previously worked with Prosthetic Renaissance, a makeup effects studio that is being credited for the transformation on social media.
The Weeknd has been using his face until the afternoon as a statement, including a mistreated aesthetic in the short film “After Hours,” which bears the same name as his most recent album. In the music video for “Blinding Lights,” his bloodied, contested cup appeared, an aspect he recreated for the MTV Video Music Awards last August. And in November, he covered his battered face again with surgical dressings to accept an award on the stages of the American Music Awards.
As for the Super Bowl LV, it’s unclear what face The Weeknd will show.