The Super Bowl halftime shows of the past few years seem to have been plagued with a curse to be very boring. With the exception of last year’s performance by Shakira and JLo, the preceding performances have been sub-par. This year, it seems singer-songwriter The Weeknd has broken the halftime show curse. With cool visuals and stellar live vocals, The Weeknd surely did not disappoint.

He began his performance in style, stepping out of a car wearing a glimmering red suit jacket. Backed by a chorus of singers, The Weeknd split his backdrop in half and stepped into the light of the stage, starting his performance with his hit song “Starboy” before smoothly transitioning into “The Hills”.

After performing these songs, he traveled behind the stage to perform his song “Can’t Feel My Face” with backup dancers dressed as a recurring character from his most recent album After Hours. This part of The Weeknd’s halftime performance stood out for many reasons; one being its meme readiness. At the start of the song, he was singing very close to the camera while the camera spun in circles creating a dizzying effect. Many people have taken screenshots and portions of the video to create a meme saying the Weeknd looked like their mom on facetime, or their dad trying to take a selfie.

Another detail from this song was the introduction of his backup dancers whose heads and faces were all wrapped in bandages and were dressed in identical suits to The Weeknd. These dancers are meant to represent “The Character”, a person The Weeknd has portrayed during recent performances. As he performs more shows, The Character’s injuries got worse until he had to undergo severe plastic surgery to recover from his injuries. The backup dancers dressed in the same bandages represent the culture of Hollywood and people manipulating themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated.

After re-entering the main stage, The Weeknd chose more upbeat songs with “I Feel It Coming” and “Save Your Tears”. After the shortened renditions of these songs, he chose to slow the performance down with his song “Earned It”. It can be hard to entertain such a huge audience with a slower song, but The Weeknd elevated the normally soft song with gospel-like vocals from the choir of people joining him on stage. His cheeky wink at the camera during this song may have also helped a bit to draw the audience in.

Finally, to wrap-up his performance, The Weeknd joined his bandaged dancers on the football field for a dance number to his big hit “Blinding Lights”. This was probably the best part of the whole performance. With the accompaniment of his dancers, fireworks, and the awesome song that is “Blinding Lights”, The Weeknd assured his performance would be remembered as epic.