The Weeknd finished off the spooky season with “São Paulo,” featuring Anitta, from his upcoming “Hurry Up Tomorrow” album, released on Oct. 30. In collaboration with Director Freeka Tet, it is arguably his most imaginative and abstract concept yet. In contrast to the funky dance beats and savagely erotic lyrics of the song, the music video visualizes an unexpected combination of dance music and abject body horror.
The “São Paulo” music video would not have been as unsettling as it was without Anitta’s terrifying performance along with Tet’s captivating cinematic choices. At the beginning of the video, the audience is entranced by the opening scene of the song title, “São Paulo,” flashing in big letters in between glimpses of Anitta drunkenly walking down the sidewalk.
Throughout the music video, horrific images of a distressed Anitta in the darkness of night are captured through her theatrical acting and shaky camerawork, evoking a sense of hysteria and vulnerability.
A thick wire connects a white, plastic mask on Anitta’s face to the device sitting on the side of a protruding baby bump. The mask is unsettling, sculpted with no expression, making Anitta appear to be a test subject walking out in the middle of an experiment. Everything about Anitta’s performance — from her gestures to the props — is unexpected and ambiguous.
Tet uses abject horror as a cinematic function to lure the audience in, using grotesque images to induce a feeling of fear, disgust and/or discomfort. Manny Lemus and Ben Bayouth distorted Anitta’s baby bump by adding a plump mouth protruding out of it. Her impregnated belly serves as an example of the hideous images that transgress societal boundaries or rules normally considered to be stable. The visual depiction of a mouth singing out of a pregnant belly is such a grotesque image because the natural state of a woman’s pregnant belly is disrupted .
The mouth sings the lyrics of The Weeknd’s part, his presence encapsulated into a freakish entity that takes over Anitta, making her become sultry and amorous in her actions. Tet and The Weeknd both play into this theme that The Weeknd’s music is undeniably desirable, evoking the adrenaline rush of a hot night in the city.
This monstrous mouth is just one of the many forms The Weeknd has taken to portray his music, especially in the last few years. For instance, his 2020 album cover for “After Hours” showed his face battered p. In 2021, “The Highlights” took the listener through The Weeknd’s botched plastic surgery journey, which was completely fake and staged to portray how life can change for the worse with the abuse of fame and money. The lyrics and overall visual performance of the album, such as the “Save Your Tears” music video, also portray his rise to stardom as he becomes richer to afford plastic surgery and hide his true identity.
The Weeknd’s fifth studio album cover “Dawn FM” from 2022, shows him as a worried old man. In this story, The Weeknd encounters his future self in “Gasoline,” which served as a sign that he was in a stage of his career where he started feeling lost in all his fame and success.
The Weeknd has put on many faces to portray his different musical eras. He uses his platform to appear as different versions of himself that have been negatively affected by the music industry. He tells a story of love, self-worth and the unfortunate events of fame through addicting melodies of electro-pop, funk and trap R&B.
Fittingly enough, the ferocious dance song of “São Paulo” made its live debut in the Brazilian megacity of São Paulo at The Weeknd’s “one-night-only” concert in the MorumBIS Stadium. The R&B starboy brought out Anitta, who seemed to be possessed by the mesmerizing rhythm of the song as she danced on a pole.
The disturbing erotica of the “São Paulo” music video starring the Queen of Brazilian Pop uses dance-pop in a horrifically twisted way, seducing the audience with chaos.
Cameryn Nguyen is an Arts & Entertainment Staff Writer. She can be reached at camerynn@uci.edu.
Edited by Annabelle Aguirre.