The Weeknd’s ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ Crosses 1 Billion Views on YouTube

By Dano Nissen

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – The music video for “Can’t Feel My Face” became The Weeknd’s third video to cross 1 billion views on YouTube. 

The singer achieved the feat before with “Starboy,” with more than 1.5 billion views, and “The Hills,” with more than 1.3 billion views. 

The video was released in 2015 and directed by Grant Singer, who was behind the camera for all three of ’s billion-plus views clips. He has also directed music videos with hundreds of millions of views with artists such as Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. The director collaborated with The Weeknd on “Call Out My Name,” “Mania” and “Tell Your Friends.”

In the video, The Weeknd performs in a bar to an uninterested crowd. Chanel Iman plays a woman in the bar, the only one that seems to take notice of the singer. Then, The Weeknd is set ablaze, sparking the audience’s interest. The singer performs the rest of the song on fire to a dancing lively bar.

“Can’t Feel My Face” joins an exclusive club of roughly 100 music videos, consisting mostly of pop songs, that have broken 1 billion views. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” holds the number one spot with 6.3 billion views. He’s also one of only 20 artists with three videos to cross the billion-view threshold.  

The Weeknd’s last studio recording was the extended play “My Dear Melancholy,” released in 2018. He recently appeared alongside Travis Scott and Sza in the video for “Power Is Power” from “For the Throne: Music Inspired by the HBO Series ‘Game of Thrones.’”