Super Bowl Halftime Show: The Weeknd Vibes Into ‘Sunday’ With Football Shower

This year’s Super Bowl 2021 halftime show will feature The Weeknd, who is sure to give viewers a show with his long list of hits. Conveniently enough, this year, you can watch the Super Bowl and The Weeknd’s halftime show performance for free. In advance of his turn on one of the world’s biggest stages, the musician, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, has shared a tease ahead of Super Bowl Sunday to his social media, getting fans pumped up about the big game.

In the post shared Friday night, The Weeknd posted a video of himself sitting for a quaint spot of tea while reading a newspaper at the stadium he’s going to perform at while ethereal music plays in the background. Just as he’s about to look up, a football falls behind him, soon followed by a rain shower of the balls falling from the sky. The post has amassed more than 1.8 million likes as of this writing.

It was originally announced in November 2020 that The Weeknd would be this year’s headliner for the halftime show. At the time, the “Blinding Lights” singer released a statement that read, per Billboard, “We all grow up watching the world’s biggest acts playing the Super Bowl and one can only dream of being in that position. I’m humbled, honored and ecstatic to be the center of that infamous stage this year.”

JAY-Z, the founder of Roc Nation, the company which has partnered with the NFL to put on the halftime show, also released a statement in which he praised The Weeknd’s artistry and said that he was the perfect choice to headline the event. “The Weeknd has introduced a sound all his own,” JAY-Z’s statement read. “His soulful uniqueness has defined a new generation of greatness in music and artistry. This is an extraordinary moment in time and the Pepsi Super Bowl LV Halftime Show is going to be an extraordinary experience with an extraordinary performer.”

In the weeks leading up to his performance, The Weeknd spoke with Billboard about what fans can expect from the show, which will take place at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida. According to the singer, he actually decided to use $7 million of his own money to help fund the show (the Super Bowl traditionally covers all production costs for the show, but he said that he wanted to make sure that this year’s event was extra special). He told the outlet, “We’ve been really focusing on dialing in on the fans at home and making performances a cinematic experience, and we want to do that with the Super Bowl.”