In a time as chaotic as this, it takes a standout choice to make a very memorable impression. And that’s exactly what The Weeknd did with the rollout of his 2020 album After Hours. Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd, hasn’t made a public appearance in nearly a year without a (fake) bloodied, bandaged, or mutilated face. And, while he sported a clean face during the Super Bowl halftime show in Florida on Sunday, he brought along a legion of backup dancers wrapped in face bandages.

The Weeknd first appeared in a red jacket and bloodied in his “Blinding Lights” video, which premiered in January 2020. In the video, a night in Vegas goes wrong, he drives drunk, ends up beaten and bloodied—it’s a far darker song than the subsequent viral TikTok dance to it lets on. The song appears on After Hours, his album that was released in March. On the album cover, and in its accompanying short film, he appears bloodied and beaten, too.

But the look spilled over into his public appearances in the following months, too, where he appeared bloodied and/or bandaged and red-jacketed on SNL in March, as well as at both the 2020 American Music Awards and the Video Music Awards. And the performance continued this year. Nearly a year after the debut of the bloodied look, The Weeknd released the music video for "Save Your Tears" in January of 2021. In this video, the narrative progresses—The Weeknd appears to have undergone extreme plastic surgery (don’t worry, it’s a full prosthetic face), revealing what the bandages in his previous appearances were covering up.

These cohesive, jarring looks in and around promotion of After Hours are perhaps a noteworthy marketing tactic, but they are also, as The Weeknd explained to Variety in between Super Bowl rehearsals on February 3, a point about the absurdity of Hollywood celebrity culture and superficial validation. "The significance of the entire head bandages is reflecting on the absurd culture of Hollywood celebrity and people manipulating themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated," he said.

His commitment to the look throughout the year also shows the extent to which The Weeknd is a persona, a character and piece of performance art intrinsically tied to his album. "It’s all a progression and we watch The Character’s storyline hit heightened levels of danger and absurdity as his tale goes on," he said. "I suppose you could take that being attractive isn’t important to me but a compelling narrative is."

On Feb. 7, it seems that character's story has entered a new phase, with The Weeknd's face clean an undamaged for the Super Bowl. But, that statement about Hollywood still lurked in the background with his army of bandaged dancers.

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