BANGKOK EMBRACES THE WEEKND
Pioneering alt-R&B singer captivates crowd while drawing comparisons to the Gloved One
Through his onstage energy, interaction with the crowd and pure voice, The Weeknd kept the audience firmly in the palm of his hand throughout the entirety of Sunday’s show at Impact Arena. The Weeknd, also known as Abel Tesfaye, set the tone for the night with up-tempo hits Pray For Me, Starboy and Party Monster that drew in the crowd from the moment he took the stage, roughly 45 minutes after the opener DJ Panda finished his set.
His grip on the crowd loosened a bit following the first songs with a couple of lesser-known tunes. However, he was able to quickly draw the audience back in with the suspense-building and climactic Call Out My Name followed by megahit Can’t Feel My Face — where, in a particularly fun moment, Tesfaye was able to sing the back up vocals of the chorus while letting the audience do their thing with the main song.
From that moment on the Canadian pop/ R&B artist never looked back, keeping the audience fully engaged with his masterful work of rising and falling, psychedelic light displays, and his angelic vocals that often draw comparisons to his childhood idol Michael Jackson.
Tesfaye showed off similarities to MJ with well-known hits like Earned It, I Feel It Coming and, more than any other song, In The Night, which showed off the singer’s incredible vocal range.
Although The Weeknd’s voice is often compared to Jackson’s, his stage presence resembles the spontaneity of the eccentric outcast-rocker Freddy Mercury more so than the choreographed performances by the smooth criminal himself.
The song Acquainted, from The Weeknd’s second studio album Beauty Behind The Madness, received the most surprising crowd reaction of the night. Despite not getting much, if any, radio play when the album was released, this song has become an anthem for millennials the world over because it speaks to the generation’s fear of commitment and avoidance of labels in relationships.
It’s almost as if the 27-year-old singer was having a personal conversation with all the other millennials who made up the majority of the audience, as they sang in unison the lyrics” “To say we’re in love is dangerous, but girl I’m so glad we’re acquainted”, and “These girls born in the 90s are dangerous”. About three-quarters into his set The Weeknd stopped for a minute to ask the crowd if he could play a few songs from his compilation album Trilogy. The audience replied with a cheer and then grew silent for the first time in the night while he sang a few of the songs about his troubled past, like The Morning. But their attention never waned, and without prompt, the phone flashlights came out and soon filled the dark stadium with spots of light, from the ground floor to the top row.
Tesfaye went all-out in the finale, performing his biggest hit to date, The Hills. Complete with a more advanced light display than previously seen, pyrotechnics on every drop and a physical performance that showed incredible stamina, the finale was everything one could have hoped for from Spotify’s No.4 alltime streaming artist, and the perfect end to a great show.
It’s almost as if the 27-year-old singer was having a personal conversation with all the other millennials in the audience