The Weeknd Closes Out Coachella With Hit-Filled, Tag-Team Set With Swedish House Mafia

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs if it didn’t take long enough to get to the 21st installment of Coachella — what with a pandemic, four postponements and yet another recent Covid spike — when original Sunday headliner Kanye West pulled out two weeks ago, Swedish House Mafia had to transform their vaguely defined position on the lineup into a headlining set. In short order the Weeknd — who is still deep in work on his HBO series “The Idol,” which he cowrote, coproduced and stars in — agreed to bump up his previously planned brief appearance with the EDM titans to a co-headlining spot with them, but he had just two weeks to pull together a set.

Yet the man otherwise known as Abel Tesfaye is nothing if not up for a challenge, and he did not disappoint during the tag-team, co-headlining, festival-closing set late Sunday night (actually Monday morning). Billed as “Swedish House Mafia x the Weeknd,” the set was essentially split into two halves, with the former opening and roaring through a tight set of their own hits, then performing briefly with the Weeknd for a couple of the recent songs they’ve released together, then ceding the stage to him for a tight megamix of his songs, ranging from global smashes like “Blinding Lights,” “I Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy” to his verses on high-profile collabs with Kanye West, Drake, Future and Ty Dolla $ign (who were not present), “Hurricane,” “Crew Love,” “Low Life” and “Or Nah,” respectively.Performing under a giant open circle that resembled something out of “Independence Day,” Swedish House Mafia opened the set with a powerful mix of their hits, accompanied by giant washes of white light, fog and spotlights.