Canadian singer The Weeknd, as part of the promotion for his comeback single ‘Blinding Lights’, is working with Mercedes-Benz to promote the EQC, the car manufacturer’s first fully electric SUV.

The partnership involves The Weeknd not only working as the co-creator of the Enjoy Electric ad campaign but also appearing in the ad itself – as well as having his new single soundtrack it.

The highly glossy ad, which runs for two and a half minutes, is the result of a deal between Mercedes-Benz and Universal Music Group & Brands. Given its length, the bulk of ‘Blinding Lights’ (with a run time of 3.22) gets a pretty comprehensive airing in the ad.

Obviously a phenomenal amount of money has been spent on the ad which involves multiple locations and tracks the evolution of the car brand through its history. It was posted on YouTube at the end of November and by the start of January it has had 3.8m views.

Interestingly, there is no official video per se for the track, with an audio-only version (29m views) and a lyric video (3m views) on The Weeknd’s official YouTube channel. Also of note is that the Mercedes-Benz ad only sits on the Mercedes-Benz YouTube channel, which seems somewhat unusual. There are just 1.16m subscribers to the MercedesBenz YouTube channel while there are 16.8m subscribers to The Weeknd’s YouTube channel.

Perhaps he was uncomfortable with an ad sitting on his own YouTube channel, but given how big a part of the promotion for the single this was and how prominent both he and the song are in the ad, it seems curious – especially as he has significantly more subscribers to his channel than MercedesBenz has to its channel.

“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a MercedesBenz?” sang Janis Joplin back in 1970. “My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.” Now instead of praying to be given one by a higher power, pop stars today just need to do ads for them.