Elusive The Weeknd hides his face behind a mask and his voice in effects

‘Blinding Lights’, the most streamed song in pop history, brought the release. Throughout the Arena, on chairs, on the field, people, in pairs or in tangles of friends, indulged in fanatical fun with clenched fists jumping to the punishing rhythms. The lamentation about loneliness, dressed in a multicolored synthesizer jacket, turned out to be the right time to visit each other.

The hit, played towards the end, was the highlight of The Weeknd’s concert on Friday evening at the Johan Cruijff ArenA in Amsterdam. Because even though the performance had speed and flexibility, a spectacular decoration and a pleasant sound for stadium standards, the human factor was often absent. Literally too, because the question was always: ‘Where is he?’ And not just because Abel Tesfaye (33) aka The Weeknd wore a silver-colored, face-covering mask in the first half of the concert.

At the start of the performance, part of the ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ tour, something spectacular seemed about to happen. The stage was filled with a skyline of a fictional city, with elements of New York (Chrysler Building) and his former hometown of Toronto. The skyline was gray and dilapidated. On top of the buildings stood three musicians, far apart.

But Tesfaye was not part of that staging. During the 37 songs he performed in two hours, he mostly walked up and down the gangway that stretched the length of the room, to the back, where a large moon hung from the ceiling. Halfway through, he circled a meter-high robotic woman with beams of light in her eyes. There were no video screens in the room (only in the back), so that he often disappeared from view for the audience elsewhere.

Royal guard

The Weeknd, who has been bringing together music across genres from new wave to hip-hop and R&B since 2011, is currently docked at a new amalgam: songs with heavy beats, shrill electronica and a compelling pulse, with his high-pitched metallic voice acting like a ointment over the wounds. It brought him success. Thanks to hits like ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Take My Breath’, ‘How Do I Make You Love Me?’ and ‘Starboy’, The Weeknd is one of the biggest pop stars of the moment. Another part of his songs is ballad-like. But songs like ‘Die For You’ and ‘Is There Someone Else?’ often sound too steeled to really touch, as was also apparent in the Arena.

As many as 30 women paraded around Tesfaye in white veils and voile robes. They didn’t dance, apart from a nice splurge during ‘After Hours’, but stood rigid on stage like a royal guard.

Tesfaye didn’t dance, saving his strength for precise singing. Though the hint of longing that had permeated his words in the past, giving him a Michael Jackson-like lightness, was absent here. Not only did his face wear a mask, his voice was also deeply hidden in a layer of effects. He sounded tight like a laser beam, even during the sensitive intro of ‘Call Out My Name’.

There was a thrilling moment as flames shot up from the gangway and behind the buildings. Usually flames are exclusively imposing, here they had a reason: a ‘burning city’ was created. But beyond a general sense of unease, it remained unclear what The Weeknd wants to say with the show. This elusiveness also colors his oeuvre, in which extreme sex and extreme drug use figure as a symbol of, perhaps, dullness or loneliness.

When it got dark outside, the huge moon lit up, while the robot woman made her eyes sparkle, which combined with a latticework of white light beams along the catwalk, resulted in a beautiful image. Still, the question remained: where is Tesfaye?