'A futuristic wizard prophet': The Weeknd delivered music and mystery at his 2025 Phoenix tour launch

Last night, the nearly sold-out crowd at Glendale's State Farm Stadium came for a killer show by The Weeknd.

They got it.

The opening show of Abel Tefaye's After Hours Til Dawn 2025 tour was two hours of eye-popping, body-moving spectacle, complete with enough cross imagery, columns of flame and weird costumes that people (and by people, I mean me) joked/not-joked that the whole production was some kind of energy-harvesting occult ritual.

Due to conflicting reports on start time and the heinous traffic situation, we missed Mike Dean, who played his newest album, "425," in its entirety.

So to our woefully unprepared ears, the party got started with a set by Atlanta-born rapper Playboy Carti.

It didn't happen right away. There was a good 10 minutes or more between when the house lights went down and the music started, a lag that started as excitement-building drama and ended up with people asking each other what was going on. (Several people behind us started rapping lines from Rob49's "WTHelly": "What the hell? What the helly? What the hellyanté?")

It took one rafter-rattling bass beat to remind us that we didn't bring earplugs, something we lamented through the rest of the show. But eardrums, schmeardrums; Carti blazed through more than 15 songs in about 45 minutes, hitting highlights such as "Evil J0rdan," Travis Scott cover "FE!N" and "Sky." He noted that he hadn't performed in the Valley since 2015; actually, it was 2016, when he appeared at the now-gone Pressroom in downtown Phoenix. Pressroom to State Farm is quite the rise, indeed.
The Weeknd's stage setup is like this: An enormous screen and an elevated stage are flanked by the ruins of a city. The crumbled buildings probably look cooler from far away. Up close, they looked like mid-level stagecraft, but they're still interesting enough that they were a popular selfie backdrop.

A cross-shaped platform runs almost the length of the floor space. Near the center, Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama's giant "Metropolis"-esque robot kept watch, glowed different colors and occasionally moved. On the arms of the cross, circular arches make the runway look like a time travel portal. Opposite the mainstage, a smaller secondary stage allowed the far side of the stadium to see the artist better.

The show began with about 30 figures slowly emerging on stage and walking solemnly down the runway. Clad in full-body red robes with hoods and full-face shiny gold masks, the dancers were soon followed by The Weeknd, looking like a fabulous Dr. Doom or a futuristic wizard prophet in a black hooded robe with sparkly gold trim and a chrome mask with glowing eyes.

The set opened with "The Abyss" off The Weeknd's latest album, January's "Hurry Up Tomorrow." And for the next 35 or so songs, the artist not only hit most of the songs on that album, but thrilled the crowd with most of his biggest hits. Though he only played part of "Starboy" (an absolute sacrilege), he shook the rafters with new and old bangers like "The Hills," "I Feel It Coming," "Save Your Tears" and "I Can't Feel My Face When I'm With You." Carti came back onstage to perform with The Weeknd for two songs, "Timeless" and "Rather Lie."
Along the way, the weird imagery and generous use of jets of flame added drama and darkness to the performance; the huge background screen showed a spiraling maelstrom of bodies, heads melting into each other and The Weeknd sitting in a desert composed of sand bodies. An overhead shot of the cross-shaped stage setup, flanked by flames and dotted with the red-robed performers was one of the most striking images of the evening. (It's giving ... ritual sacrifice or "Eyes Wide Shut: The Musical.")

Though the visuals were dark and foreboding, the man was not. I don't know what it feels like to have 60,000 people screaming for you, but by the look I saw on The Weeknd's face at the top of the set, it's humbling, a cause for joy and gratitude. The nuances of his voice don't come through the same on a recording; the phrasing, the emotion are even more engaging in person, and the moments when he worked the rail and gave the mic to fans to sing during "Out of Time" were some of the most joyous of the evening.

The smallest of quibbles: The Weeknd, or more to the point, the concert, didn't quite stick the landing. The singer drew screams when "Blinding Lights" began; it was about 11 p.m. at that point, and it seemed like the megahit would be the show's closer. Instead, he went on for two more songs — "In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)" from the "Eraserhead" soundtrack (yeah, I was surprised, too) and Swedish House Mafia collab "Moth to a Flame" — neither of which could match the emotional high of "Blinding Lights."

But that small disconnect didn't ruin the impact of the evening, which showed the depth of The Weeknd's talent and creativity.

In the end, maybe the only things that got sacrificed were my eardrums. It was worth it.

Here are more photos from the concert: