The Weeknd has finally shared the music video for ‘Popular’ featuring Madonna and Playboi Carti. Check it out below.
The video first premiered in the game Fortnite last week. Due to the positive online response – garnering over 334,000 likes on Instagram and over 3.2million impressions on X/Twitter – The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) decided to release the music video on his official Youtube channel.
Released this week (February 22), the music video was directed by Cliqua and shows Tesfaye performing to the camera in an extravagant mansion. Madonna is seen dancing around an opulent New York City penthouse suite, as Carti cruises around the capital in a luxury car with a woman by his side.
The single was released last June and featured on the soundtrack for the HBO Max series, The Idol – which The Weeknd co-created, co-produced and starred in. The singer first teased the song at last year’s Cannes Film Festival when a snippet played during a show screening and quickly circulated on social media.
Tesfaye collaborated with several notable artists on the soundtrack, including Future for ‘Double Fantasy’, Mike Dean for ‘The Idol Theme Song’, and Lil Baby for ‘False Idols’. Additionally, his on-screen love interest Lily-Rose Depp joined him on three tracks: ‘Dollhouse’, ‘Fill The Void’, and ‘One Of Those Girls’ (featuring vocals from BLACKPINK’s Jennie).
Moses Sumney and Troye Sivan also contributed their own songs, with the latter covering George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’. The ‘Blinding Lights’ singer also covered John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ for the show’s soundtrack.
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In August 2023, The Idol was cancelled after one season and the final sixth episode was never aired.
Currently, The Weeknd is set to release his sixth studio album, which is the final instalment in his recent ‘After Hours’/’Dawn FM’ album trilogy. The singer previously described the album’s concept as a state of purgatory and seeing the “light at the end of a tunnel”, which fans have believed to allude to the afterlife.
In other news, fans still await Carti’s third studio album currently dubbed ‘I AM MUSIC’. He released five singles from the album: ‘Different Day’ (also known as ‘Ur the m00n’), ‘2024’, ‘H00dByAir’, ‘Backr00ms‘ featuring Travis Scott, and ‘EvilJ0rdan’.
Madonna is currently on the ‘Celebration’ world tour, which will now finish in Mexico this April. You can buy tickets here.