It feels wrong to watch The Weeknd performing in the daylight.For the last 15 years, Abel Tesfaye’s high-sleaze alter ego has made his name telling nighttime tales, as if he’s spent his every waking moment (and your every sleeping one) enjoying group sex and party drugs and all the other activities that take place under the cover of darkness. In the process, the Canadian has made himself an avatar for the sex dreams of millions of people the world over: you might never have an MDMA threesome but listening to “Often” is essentially the same thing, or at least can make you feel a similar way.Across six albums, Tesfaye has indulged in every fantasy imaginable—and found them all to be wanting. His is the exquisite sadness of living the kind of life every part-time hedonist dreams of. He is one of the most successful artists of the 21st century, with a back catalog of glamorous girlfriends and the approval of generational auteurs like Dan Lopatin, the Safdies, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Hidetaka Miyazaki, yet the endless splendours life offers him always turn out to be hollow disappointments: The reality never lives up to the dream. This puts the listener in a curiously gratifying position: not only can you enjoy the vicarious experience of endless decadence through The Weeknd’s music, he’ll also tell you why, actually, you needn’t really want any of that at all.You are, in effect, being set free from your own desire. View this post on Instagram Tesfaye’s ability to provide this service is what makes him, in 2026, the undisputed King of the American Night. His recent trilogy of records—After Hours, Dawn FM, and Hurry Up Tomorrow—are three modern playboy classics. But this is a sadder kind of playboy than we’ve known before, someone who appears to have it all but continues to roam the night, yearning for something greater than himself to surrender to. So perhaps it should come as little surprise that Tesfaye seems ready to surrender his crown, likely soon. In the world of the playboy, nothing is greater than the playboy himself.He’d started hinting about ending things long before this record-breaking After Hours til Dawn Tour, and was certainly doing so while on press duties or his widely panned TV show The Idol. In Mexico a couple of months back, he crooned to the crowd, “One more leg and I’ll disappear / Only just one year and I’ll disappear.” Before the time comes to make good on this promise, The Weeknd is back in Europe for a run of stadium shows. I caught him in Denmark this weekend, at the height of the Scandinavian summer, when the evenings are so long it feels uncertain if the sun will ever go down.For once, The Weeknd can’t complain about feeling lonely: for the European dates, he’s been joined by a 40-foot gold woman (the largest fine art piece ever commissioned for a concert, apparently). On one level the boyish largesse of this is so archetypally id that it’s endearing, the kind of thing two coked-up dreamers might have workshopped on any given 5AM sofa anywhere in the world, at any point in the last 50 years. He certainly seems keen to go out having left no fantasy unindulged. At the same time, it seems telling that at the moment of his “last hurrah” he’s being eclipsed, literally, by a giant sculpture that appears to be a fairly obvious embodiment of sex, fame, and power—exactly what he represents for his countless fans.Standing on a dais in the middle of the football pitch at Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium, this huge “sexy robot“ is so striking that when The Weeknd emerges at the start of the concert, it’s difficult to focus on him as he drifts aimlessly around her metallic feet. He’s wearing a mask for the first part of his set, complete with glowing eyes that flash red with lust, and intermittently display pinpoint black pupils. He comes across like a vampiric Lost Boy, wary of and unused to the daylight, which is so bright you can make out every face in the crowd, something he mentions early on. The contradiction here suits The Weeknd, maker of songs that are both revealing and impersonal.The Weeknd is initially accompanied by a group of backing dancers clad in red robes and gold masks, which instantly brings to mind Eyes Wide Shut. This film is, of course, a schizoposter favorite and, in this post-Epstein moment, songs like “Heartless” sound more sinister than ever as the dancers ritualistically gyrate to lyrics like “I’ve been runnin’ through the pussy, need a dog pound / Hundred models gettin’ faded in the compound.” Dreamlike cinema has always been a natural reference point for The Weeknd, his debut album Kissland was conceptualized as a horror movie in the spirit of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Ridley Scott—and Stanley Kubrick’s final masterpiece speaks to many of same themes as Tesfaye’s music: the story of a fragile man’s psychosexual dark night of the soul, which at the same time holds up a mirror to own our lusts. The dancers here appear to represent the many temptations of modern life and, tellingly, it’s only when he’s completely surrounded by them (and the sun has set) that The Weeknd seems comfortable enough to remove his mask.As the night draws in, the giant statue glitters like an Oscar; the resemblance is probably no coincidence, just like the fact that the artist behind it, Hajime Sorayama, has previously depicted Abel’s ex-girlfriend, supermodel Bella Hadid, in a similar way. At times, The Weeknd appears unable to take his eyes off the sculpture, serenading her, craning his neck back to admire that giant body, the reflective surface mirroring the crowd back onto itself. Through a thousand raised phonescreens, I watch as she fires lasers from her eyes and farts clouds of smoke. No wonder The Weeknd has his sunglasses on after dark, another protective shield, just like the fortifying presence of support act Playboi Carti, who returns to the stage to perform “Timeless” and “Rather Lie”.The Weeknd finally lets his guard down during “One of the Girls”, a song from The Idol, where he plays a disturbing, exaggerated version of himself. The whole thing was dismissed by critics as “torture porn,” but I’ve always felt like it had something interesting to say about our relationship to sex and celebrity in these voyeuristic times. It is, though, hard not to feel a touch uncomfortable as a crowd of teenagers sing along to a chorus of “Force me and choke me ’til I pass out”.That the escapades (real or otherwise) of this thirty-something man seem to thoroughly resonate with quite so many women speaks to something beyond basic instinct. When The Weeknd goes to sing “Out of Time” with a woman in the crowd, she starts to weep uncontrollably, telling him “you saved my life.” This is not the kind of reaction he’d be getting if all he talked about was how much he loved shagging and snorting and boozing. In many ways, the story of someone who has it all yet still doesn’t have enough is one that satisfies all of us; it certainly offers a way to sooth the innate contradictions that come with a parasocial relationship to a rich and famous musician. View this post on Instagram Between songs, The Weeknd takes long pauses to soak up the moment, as if in recognition that this will all be over soon. I’m convinced that at one point, I saw him wiping away tears on the big screen. Perhaps it’s these moments, the glimpses of something deep within the spectacle, that are the biggest clue that he’s now ready to retire the debauched persona. His two-hour set ends on this note, as the red-caped women return and The Weeknd follows them toward an obliterating light at the back of the stage, only to stop at the very last moment, ready to change, to commit to a different kind of life. Then there’s fireworks and pyrotechnics during “Moth to the Flame”, a celebration: Finally, he’s reached the other side of the night. OTHER NEWSWhen the novelist Joyce Carol Oates tells you that social media is a waste of time, you should listen to her—not because her books are good (they are), but because she’s been known to post 36 tweets a day (many of which are also very good).If pop legend Madonna really believes in the power of dance music to save people, then why is she not releasing her new collaboration with electronic musician Arca as part of Confessions II? This is serious, Madge. People are dying.Google is investing $75 million in independent film studio A24, with the two companies forming some kind of AI research partnership. Hopefully this fake post from a few years ago will become a reality and the cash can be used to find “some tweets to turn into movies.”PREDICTION FOR THE WEEKDwayne “The Rock” Johnson becomes the first bald celebrity to turn up to a function wearing Snake Eyewear by GuiFou. Everyone jokes about it, though obviously not to his face.BRAND NEW SENTENCEWowcher sorry for ‘unacceptable’ crocodile attack emailBONUS PREDICTION: WHAT WILL THE WEEKND DO NEXTAfter hitting like on an Instagram reel shot at his concert with the caption “no one here knows im the Subway Surfers admin,“ The Weeknd is announced as a new playable character on the insanely popular mobile game. Who needs to goon when you can spend up to 10 hours a day dodging animated trains.Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoiThe post Watching The Weeknd Live: Is The King of The American Night Finally Done With Decadence? appeared first on VICE.