Move over, Lady Gaga — another musician is here to talk Method acting. The Weeknd and his collaborators reflected on the monstrous chart run for “Blinding Lights” in a new Billboard cover story, which declared the song No. 1 on its “Greatest Songs of All Time Hot 100 Chart.” (Curiously, the story dropped the same day as the Grammy nominations — where the Weeknd won’t appear because of an ongoing boycott after the awards snubbed “Blinding Lights” last year.) The oral history of the song featured interviews from the Weeknd, a.k.a. Abel Tesfaye, along with super-producer Max Martin and a slew of label executives. And most important, Fresh, the tailor who brought to life the Weeknd’s red suit — the calling card for After Hours, the album that featured “Blinding Lights.” “It really resonated with him, and he just kept reordering it,” Fresh told the magazine. “I think after the third reorder, I got it. I lost count after 15, 18.” So are we talking 20 red suits? 50?? All Fresh knows is it worked. “It wasn’t just Abel anymore,” the tailor went on. “He created a persona and took this guy through a whole experience. I had never seen someone take on a character like that for an entire year.” As he inhabited the character, Tesfaye added, “People were asking me if I was hurt physically, if I was mentally okay.”
The red suit made its debut in the December 2019 music video for After Hours lead single “Heartless” and stayed in use through the Weeknd’s February 2021 Super Bowl halftime show. That performance “kind of immortalized him,” Tesfaye told Billboard of the character. Fresh agreed: “He did the best job since Michael Jackson did that red jacket.”
