The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) has released the music video for his single Save Your Tears earlier today (January 5).
Save Your Tears is from his fourth studio album After Hours (2020).
In the video, the Canadian singer performs in a nightclub, sporting a weird-looking facial makeover, a red jacket, black pants, black shirt and tie, and black leather gloves.
When The Weeknd performed Save Your Tears at the 2020 American Music Awards back in November, his face was bloodied and bandaged.
But in the new video, The Weeknd’s face has undergone a bizarre surgical makeover that resembles a creepy clown mask.
He has a strong jawline, jutting The Joker-style chin, prominent cheekbones, and full lips. All the other actors in the video and members of his band are wearing glittery ball masks.
After starting his performance, The Weeknd walks away from the stage and through the audience. He returns to the stage with a maskless young woman. They dance together while The Weeknd holds a handgun behind his back.
He then places the gun in the girl’s hand and makes her hold the gun to his head.
Toward the end of the video, it is The Weeknd who is left holding the gun. We may surmise that the girl refused to pull the trigger, so he points the gun at his head and fires it.
The gun releases confetti and the audience cheers while he stands laughing like a clown.
The Weeknd performed Save Your Tears at the 2020 American Music Awards
The Weeknd previously performed Save Your Tears and In Your Eyes (featuring Kenny G) at the 2020 American Music Awards in November 2020, but his face was bandaged (see video below).
He continued the video’s narrative in the multiple official music videos he has released for his After Hours album.
He cut up his face and left it spewing blood in the music video for Blinding lights. He gets decapitated in In Your Eyes and his head is attached to another person’s body in Too Late.
What does The Weeknd’s video series mean?
Some fans see the series of videos as dramatizing how the pressures of the entertainment industry distort the artist’s personality.
In Save Your Tears, many see The Weeknd making a subtle dig at the entertainment industry, specifically the Grammys.
i think Abel is showing us how constantly pressured he feels to be “perfect” by the industry, grammys etc so now he got that botched up face
and i think at some point he will have an alone again mv where he takes it off and learns to love himself for who he is pic.twitter.com/MgqtiQUfaa— ? ⛓? (@oxcyhours) January 5, 2021
Monsters and Critics reported back in October that Twitter fans began sharing a photoshopped image of The Weeknd that shows him looking much thicker.
The photo went viral and some Twitter users started a meme contrasting the slim In Your Eyes singer with his overweight version which some dubbed The Month.