Executive Editor, Music

The Weeknd doesn't do anything half-heartedly, and for his "One Night Only" concert on Saturday night at the MorumBIS stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he exceeded expectations with cameos from Anitta and Playboi Carti, a massive backlit stage with a massive video screen that must have been at least 100 feet high, dozens of (naturally) blinding lights, a global YouTube livestream of the show, and the premieres of several new songs, presumably from his forthcoming album, "Hurry Up Tomorrow."

That night's show was actually an evolution of the "After Hours Til Dawn" concert he brought to North America in 2022 and, in an updated form, to Europe last year: a massive, almost airport runway-like, lighted walkway stretching from one end of the stadium floor to the other, but with a giant, two-story temple-like building in the middle and an illuminated, cross-shaped stage on the other side of the walkway, opposite the video screen.

The battery of robed female dancers carried over from the earlier stages of the tour, as did the stadium-filling light show and the state-of-the-art lighting system, which projected mostly white and red lights from several elevated areas of the stadium, as well as the stage and runway. He took full advantage of the towering video screen, filling it with everything from clouds to a cityscape, waterfalls to explosions, giant cathedral-like windows and even an eerily large close-up of his own eye.