The Weeknd feels its own face again.
In a new ad for Pepsi ahead of his big Super Bowl halftime gig, the 30-year-old singer chose to drop his cryptic bandages and CGI plastic surgery, showing off his real face for the first time in a while .
The one-minute teaser before the show, on February 7, features a montage of fans enjoying his song “Blinding Lights,” including a supermarket employee and a pool cleaner dancing to his tune like no one is watching.
At the very end, The Weeknd smiles at a toll booth guard who was interrupted while grooving the hit.
It’s the first time in a while that fans have seen his real face since The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, has donned bandages as part of an aesthetic for his latest album. (And as Variety noted, it’s the first Pepsi ad dropped before Super Bowl Sunday, airing on CBS, and the artist’s first time in it.)
Recently, The Weeknd released a music video for his new song “Save Your Tears,” featuring some disturbing changes to his face – similar to extreme plastic surgery. “But then you saw me, surprised you,” he aptly sings in the video, showing a thinned (and crooked) nose, puffy cheeks, puffy lips, surgical scars and other gruesome new features.
Fans speculated it was shadow because they weren’t nominated for the 2021 Grammy Awards, but other fans considered it a diss for ex-girlfriend Bella Hadid.
However, fans should not be alarmed. The disturbing new look was achieved through prosthetics and CGI. He previously worked with Prosthetic Renaissance, a makeup effects studio that takes credit for its social media transformation.
The Weeknd has been using his face as a statement lately, including a battered aesthetic in the short film “After Hours,” which bears the same name as his most recent album. The music video for “Blinding Lights” featured his post-bender bloody and bruised mug – a look he recreated for the MTV Video Music Awards last August. And in November, he covered his re-battered face with surgical dressing to receive an award on the American Music Awards stage.
As for Super Bowl LV, it’s unclear which face The Weeknd will be showing.