Weeknd feels his own face again.
In a new commercial for Pepsi before his big Super Bowl break, the 30-year-old singer chose to give up 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 his song, “Dazzling Lights,” including a grocery store worker and a pool cleaner dancing to his song as if nobody looks.
Right at the end, The Weeknd smiles at a toll booth security guard, who was interrupted in the groove until the blow.
It’s the first time in a while that fans have seen his real face since The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, is wearing bandages as part of the aesthetic for his latest album. (And, as Variety noted, it’s the first Pepsi ad released before Super Bowl Sunday, which airs on CBS and the first time the performer has participated in one.)
Recently, The Weeknd released a video for his new song “Save the Tears”, wearing some disturbing changes on his face – similar to extreme plastic surgery. “But then you saw me, I caught you by surprise,” he sings appropriately in the video, in which he displays a thin (and crooked) nose, swollen cheeks, swollen lips, surgical scars and other horrible features.
Fans have speculated that it is the shadow for not being nominated for the 2021 Grammy Awards, but other fans have taken it as a disgrace to his ex-girlfriend Bella Hadid.
However, fans should not be alarmed. The new annoying aspect was achieved through prostheses and CGI. He previously worked with Prosthetic Renaissance, a makeup effects studio that deserves to be transformed on social media.
Weeknd has used his face until recently as a statement, including an aesthetic beaten in the short film “After Hours”, which has the same name as his latest album. The video for “Blinding Lights” featured his bloody, bruised post-bender mug – an aspect he recreated at the MTV Video Music Awards in August last year. And in November, she covered her battered face again with a surgical dressing to accept an award on stage at the American Music Awards.
As for the Super Bowl LV, it’s not clear what The Weeknd will look like.