“I’m gonna make it a point — I’m never gonna skip Houston, ever, on any tour.” Abel Tesfaye, otherwise known as The Weeknd, made this candid, apologetic promise during the middle of his After Hours til Dawn set at NRG Stadium after fully embracing the crowd through chants and cheers. With his last performance in the city being in 2017 for the Starboy tour, it’s no wonder that Houstonians were raving with energy to celebrate his tour stop eight years later as if it was a designed rarity.
The Weeknd originally announced a North American arena tour, supporting his fourth album After Hours, in late February of 2020 with a planned stop at Toyota Center in July of that year. Unfortunately for all of us, the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the tour’s start date until 2021 and then 2022. At this point, the world-renowned artist had released his fifth album Dawn FM, building up so much anticipation that arenas like Toyota Center were constrained by ticket demand. Because of this, he postponed the tour a third time and rebranded from an arena tour to a stadium one, thereby accommodating more fans and revenue. The North American leg consisted of 21 shows, with only one in Texas: Arlington, not Houston. After three long years of world touring, and the ironically named release of Hurry Up Tomorrow, Tesfaye finally announced a second North American leg with a double show in Houston’s own NRG Stadium. For the Weeknd, the fans, and reviewers alike: it was a uniquely uplifting experience.
Entering the city ruins-themed stage behind a flock of red-robed dancers, the masked megastar directed his crew to surround a giant “Sexy Robot” sculpture in a dystopian manner that evoked both fear and fascination out of the audience. Running through tracks from the new EP like “The Abyss” and “Wake Me Up” as well his most nostalgic villain themes “Starboy” and “Heartless,” Tesfaye set up a theatrically tense distance between himself and the crowd that climatically closed after he took off his mask and demonstrated that Houston would be receiving a performance from the heart.
Tesfaye closed this strong introduction with Dawn FM tracks that eerily resembled Michael Jackson, including “Take My Breath” and “Sacrifice,” and the Kids’ Choice Cocaine Anthem “Can’t Feel My Face.” At this point, the entire crowd was overflowing with hype, and it was hard to fathom that we were about one-fourth of our way into the set when producer/opening act Mike Dean came to synthesize the rest of the show. The next segment of the show, I felt the Weeknd was personally targeting me with soul-wrenching songs that I have not kept in musical routine: “Kiss Land,” “Often,” “I Was Never There,” and “Lost in the Fire” capture the four dimensions of the Weeknd’s artistry, and how he captures the necessary imagery to express personal experiences: vivid storytelling, love and vice as pleasure, love and vice as pain, and the contrast of pain and pleasure using dance as a medium.
What I really appreciated was Tesfaye’s efforts to perform across the entire cross-shaped stage, including right where I was seated. He managed to follow this same formula for this segment: “Baptized in Fear,” “The Hills,” “Cry for Me,” and “Open Hearts,” respectively. I can personally attest to this moment being the most I’ve positively energized I’ve been from being in a popular artist’s immediate radius – to hear such great vocals isolated from the sound system is truly a unique experience, and I’m especially glad I got to sing with my favorite song off the latest album (Baptized). After the Brazilian funk bop “São Paulo,” opening act Playboi Carti returned to the stage.
Carti is one of the main contemporary artists known for acting “mysterious” and forging an untraditional music persona. Aside from behavior, Carti has canceled and now restored entire tours (Antagonist). The last time Carti came to Houston in 2021, it was infamously canceled due to crowd chaos that required involvement from the HPD (Much more understandable if you listen to Whole Lotta Red). So in spite of him only showing up at the beginning for 6 songs off his bat-shaped mic (“FE!N”, “Sky”, and tracks off I AM MUSIC), it was similar to catching a glimpse of Bigfoot, which I thought was cool. His return to the stage saw him join forces with The Weeknd to seamlessly switch hooks off their two joint tracks “Timeless” and “RATHER LIE,” a testament to their newfound professional collaboration.
Around this time, the Weeknd mentioned that he was just warming up. That became apparent to me and my girlfriend as he ran through ten back-to-back bangers, in arguably the best medley of songs I’ve heard live. For the only time all show, him and his dancers disappeared from stage and reappeared with “Stargirl Interlude,” “Out of Time,” “I Feel It Coming,” “Die for You,” “Is There Someone Else?” “Wicked Games,” “Call Out My Name,” “The Morning,” “Save Your Tears,” “Less Than Zero,” and “Blinding Lights,” the last of which was sung in our area in one of my most musically immersive experiences of all time.
Getting in the show was a nightmare. 610 stop-and-go, stadium traffic, parking troubles, confusion between event staff, and finding our seat took an hour longer than expected, and I imagine I wasn’t the only person in those predicaments. But with scatters of people shuffling to beat the exit traffic or assuming the concert was over, The Weeknd shut that down: “Houston, you’re going home when I tell you to!” He swapped the crowd’s external hype for an internal nostalgia with the song from his first commercially released album of the same name “House of Balloons,” and officially wrapped up with the dance-hall tribute “Moth To A Flame.”
In my personal experience, there were some obvious hitmakers I have seen live that held the crown for keeping the energy consistent as a concert: Taylor Swift, Post Malone, and Travis Scott to name a few. But I would go as far as to say The Weeknd did not miss a single beat in connecting with the crowd, even if he was inserting “Houston, Texas” in every song that mentioned a city or state. An experience like that is hard to replicate or articulate, but there’s one thing I can say with certainty from H-town: I hope it doesn’t take eight more years for The Weeknd to call out our name.
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“Kids’ Choice Cocaine Anthem?” Love it. Great job! And remember: Parking IS everything.