Bonnaroo 2017 closed with a little flip of the script: While the festival’s requisite legacy act usually headlines Sunday night, U2 had already played. That left The Weeknd, arguably the biggest contemporary pop star on the bill, to close out the fest. Bonnaroovians, who’d been baking in the sun for a few days by now, didn’t seem bothered by the change, packing the What Stage field from end to end as they waited for the Torontonian golden boy to grace us with some dark and sexy jams.
With a giant neon-and-metal triangular structure hovering and rotating above him, the multi-platinum-voiced crooner wasted no time with banter or small talk, launching straight into his Daft Punk collab “Starboy,” the title track from last year’s chart-topping smash of an album. For the next 75 minutes, he plied us with the choicest cuts from that record as well as his 2015 breakthrough Beauty Behind the Madness.
We’re committed fans, but the man born Abel Tesfaye still inspires a little skepticism that he actually dives quite as hard into the vapid, hedonistic, depression-fueled spiral of drugs and sex as he might have us believe. Maybe it’s his boyish H&M-sponsored aesthetic, or maybe it’s the lyrics of songs like “Reminder,” which is ultra-emphatic about The Weeknd being a party animal, going so far as to say, “I’m like, goddamn, bitch, I am not a Teen Choice.” But he definitely is teen-idol material: James Dean obsessed with Brett Easton Ellis novels, a perfect 21st-century bad boy. In any case, the moody tunes are tailor-made for a party, and Sunday night they served their purpose well.
Despite previous collaborators like Travis Scott and Belly having played earlier in the fest, The Weeknd defied Bonnaroo traditions by calling up zero surprise guests. Not that he needed them. The charismatic millennial poster boy had no trouble carrying the show with very little banter, relying mostly on his performance to keep the crowd hyped — though he did frequently sneak the word “Bonnaroo” into the lyrics.
The day’s humidity and heat had given way to a slight chill, and as the set neared its close, it seemed to dawn on everyone at once that these were our last moments to rage. While the victory lap of “Can’t Feel My Face” and the Daft Punk-produced “I Feel It Coming” set off a respectably wild response from the crowd, it was an encore of “The Hills” that really whipped us into a final bacchanalian frenzy. After four long days in the field, this was the satisfying final shot of euphoria we needed to make our journey home.
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In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
