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The Weeknd has always tried to deconstruct the relationship between his persona and the music he creates From the beginning - Tesfaye first released his music anonymously on YouTube in 2010 before eventually, slowly, climbing into The Weeknd’s current full-bodied persona - he has always seemed to want to explore the relationship between the self and music, and how one can take us out of the other.
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But they’re also examples of the way The Weeknd uses both his alter ego and his music to wryly deconstruct the free and easy escapism of pop music. These themes clearly resonated with the lives of listeners in 2020. “No one’s around to judge me / I can’t see clearly when you’re gone.” “The city’s cold and empty,” The Weeknd sings. Instead, once the meme had served as a perfect gateway, the message of “Blinding Light” took over, and it was an eerily prescient pandemic anthem of distance and loneliness.
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If the meme had been the only thing drawing people to the song, it surely would have faded away by summer. The meme, along with the instrumental hook itself, divorced the song’s music from its message - at least initially. Because the song, like so much of The Weeknd’s music, is a dark, slick anthem to self-destruction, a nearly manic bop about using drugs to numb the pain. Ironically, the “Blinding Lights” meme arguably united families, friends, celebrities, and even virtual classrooms, more than the song itself ever could. This isn’t the first time a TikTok meme launched a song to the top of the pop charts Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” followed a similar trajectory in 2019, as have many other hits. It’s now one of the most record-breaking songs ever. The song reigned over radio waves and the internet for most of 2020, eventually becoming the top Spotify song of the year and the longest-charting radio hit in history. The TikTok meme helped vault “Blinding Lights” to chart-topping status - and once there, it stayed and stayed. TikTok helped The Weeknd’s 2019 single “Blinding Lights” become a cultural juggernaut - and the pandemic did the did this in one take ♬ Blinding Lights - MACDADDYZ So how did The Weeknd, of all artists, wind up nabbing the much-coveted Super Bowl gig, which will be watched by as many as 100 million people when he takes the stage Sunday in Tampa? In a nutshell: because of the internet - and because of one record-breaking hit song that’s arguably become a vital soundtrack for the Covid-19 pandemic. The Weeknd’s oeuvre is not exactly primetime family fare. “He uses all of these metaphors to intentionally obscure the terrible realities of life,” Charlie Harding, host of the Switched on Pop podcast, told Vox in an interview. In the concept that accompanies his most recent album, 2020’s After Hours, he’s rocking bandages, bruises, and what might be described as a “bender aesthetic.” Neither does The Weeknd’s current, highly perfected public persona, an alter ego version of himself that seems to visualize and externalize the troubled cycle of thrill-seeking, addiction, rehab, and relapse that he has said he struggled with for years. That doesn’t make for much of a family-friendly, Super Bowl-ready image. The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) has long been known for nihilistic, drug-fueled, orgiastic pop hits like 2015’s “ The Hills” (“When I’m fucked up, that’s the real me”) and “ Can’t Feel My Face” (“I know she’ll be the death of me, at least we’ll both be numb”). He’s one of the most popular performers of the modern era, but The Weeknd probably isn’t the first person you think of when you envision the ideal Super Bowl halftime performer.