Madrid (EFE).- Having become the most listened to artist on Spotify in the world, The Weeknd was only missing a great tour to complete his rise among the greatest, which would allow him to actually look to the skies, something that has been demonstrated by this Tuesday in Madrid from a spectacular hell on earth.
Never before has this global music star performed in Spain outside of the festival format with all its production set-up (he was part of the Primavera Sound line-up in 2012 and 2017) and he had never set foot in the capital to showcase his music before. live.
He did it today in style, before a well-nourished capacity (the organization has not provided the exact figure) at the Metropolitan Stadium in the capital and in the first of the two stops in this country on his “After Hours Til Dawn” tour. which on Thursday will take him to the Estadi Olímpic Lluis Companys in Barcelona.
Apocalyptic city in ruins
Rarely has the apocalypse been as spectacular as in the scenario conceived for the occasion, with an entire city in ruins recreated from emblematic buildings, a gigantic robot at its core as a menacing lookout and a spectral moon at the other end between flames, an overwhelming play of lights and almost thirty dancers cloaked in a kind of white burqa.
Also generous in themes and in duration, more than thirty over nearly two hours, his concert has been lavished with the best of his entire career from his 2011 “mixtapes” to his last two albums, “Dawn FM ” (2022) and the even more successful “After Hours” (2020), which put music to much of the pandemic, especially “Blinding Lights”, the most broadcast song in Spain in the year of its release.
This first concert in Madrid has only failed what usually weighs down almost each of the musical “shows” that are held in the Metropolitan: its sound, blurred and more robotic than intended, which has made it impossible to enjoy the voice crisp and profuse treble from The Weeknd.
Abel Tesfaye (Toronto, 1990), the real name of this Canadian artist who will shortly get rid of his current artistic pseudonym to start a new stage in his career, has not overlooked the unbearable 37 degrees of temperature inside the stadium either. .
“It’s very hot in here!” He exclaimed, clad in a thick vest and behind a metal mask that he kept for the first half of the concert.
“Take My Breath” o “Can’t Feel My Face”
In this section, among the roar of his followers, he has not taken long to release some of his greatest hits, such as “Take My Breath” or “Can’t Feel My Face”, surrounded by musicians strategically located (and almost camouflaged) between the roofs of the buildings in ruins of its decoration.
Among all this sensationalism, extended to the stands thanks to the bracelets that have been given to the attendees, it has fallen into a certain monotony at times and a little more closeness or connection has been missed in the face of a mammoth scenario in which it was easy to lose to its protagonist, with the distance created by his mask and with only two very lateral screens without a performance to match.
These possible shortcomings have been eclipsed, however, by numbers like “Starboy”, capable of dulling all the senses (subsequent applause has confirmed this), and later, already with his face uncovered (something that the public has celebrated even more ), with one of the climaxes of the night with “After hours”, “Out of Time”, “I Feel it Coming” and “Die For You”, linked with a clearer sound.
“It’s my first time in Madrid but I can assure you that it won’t be the last!”, he has promised to the fury of his admirers and under the gigantic decorative moon that has played no role other than reducing the visibility of part of the attendees.
In the final stretch, the dynamics of the “show” have fallen back into a certain linearity until the big “hits” have arrived, from “Save your tears” to a showy “Less Than Zero” and a highly anticipated “Blinding Lights”, which that has left the subsequent encores orphaned by a trackbreaker to end up high, among the recent “Popular” (from his series “The Idol”) or “Moth To The Flame”.