After failing to toss a bag of money from one van to another in order to save one girl he and his crew handcuffed and placed in their van, an attempt on the singer's life once again occurs until the girl saves him. The bloody, explosive, action-packed visual, carries on the narrative in that once again we find our subject falling for someone. Jumping from murderer and home raider, Weeknd gets involved in a bank robbery turned high-speed chase all told through a first-person viewpoint. From there, they dance the night away and let the angelic sounds of "I Feel It Coming" shower the scene. In this case, the panther, which transforms into love interest, saves his life following an attempted murder. It seems, based off this video, that whoever earns Weeknd's interest, eventually finds themselves in life or death situations. In the end, he destroys all evidence and history of his past and drives off with a black panther.Ĭarrying on the narrative, the 12-minute short "M A N I A" finds the singer carrying on from where he left off in "Starboy." It begins with him zipping through the twisties of Mulholland Drive in a red McLaren P1 with the panther riding shotgun and later closes with the mentioned panther morphing into a love interest. Much can be said for this cross and what it symbolizes. In this case, the "new" is the Starboy-era version of himself and through the direction of Grant Singer, we see him sporting an iced out Crucifix as breaks into a version of his Beauty Behind the Madness alter-ego's residence and ransacks the place before stealing a pinkly-lit, illuminated cross. Just like he does his Instagram timeline when getting ready to announce a new "chapter," and in the videos for the Beauty-era, Weeknd destroys his past to introduce us to the new. But don't run with our guesstimation without checking out the reasons below. What's the neon residue represent? Why did The Weeknd turn into stone, and how the hell did he end up there in the first place? In an attempt to uncover the meaning behind the five Starboy videos (sans "Reminder"), including the "M A N I A" short, and pick apart the continuity between visuals and themes, we watched "Starboy," "M A N I A," "False Alarm," "Party Monster," and "I Feel It Coming" and came to the conclusion that Weeknd could be experiencing an out of body experience throughout all these vids. In the end, we get left with many questions. Emerging from this rubble is a black snake, which the Weeknd reaches over for and he too transforms into into stone à la Han Solo's hibernated fate in "Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back." In the end, he gets snowed over and Daft Punk emerges out of nowhere to recover what appears to be a neon leftover of Weeknd's existence. However, following an eclipse, the woman gets turned into stone and later crumbles into rubble after a heavy wind knocks her over. Playing a literal Starboy, Weeknd dances around a Mars-like planet, waiting for his Stargirl to morph into human form. Directed by Warren Fu, we find our musical hero once again ducking and dodging a brush with death as told through his signature extraordinary fantasy.
This week, the singer unveiled an intergalactic scene for the visual to "I Feel It Coming," the hit album's Daft Punk-assisted closer.
In "I Can't Feel My Face" he is dancing for the devil, playing to his tune and "Tell Your Friends," he puts a bullet in him, only to find him in "The Hills." The story is all over the place, considering the separate release of each videos, but the theme is there.įast forward to Starboy, the latest chapter in his dark, twisted fantasy, and Weeknd's visual storyboard once again unravels before our eyes. This narrative could be interpreted as the singer selling his soul to the devil, which was represented through the use of the Lynchian tableau - the elderly fella perched on a chair - haunting every video, as well as the multiple obstacles the singer came faced with (car wreck, shootouts, flames), only to later reclaim his freedom. In 2015, we saw him narrate his growth from dark prince of R&B to pop virtuoso in front of our eyes, via the storytelling told in the visuals for "The Hills," "I Can't Feel My Face," "Tell Your Friends," and "In the Night."īeneath the blood, the arson, shootouts and the murders, the Grant Singer-directed videos provided an element of symbolism to Weeknd bidding adieu to his past glories.
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