Rihanna performs onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show at State Farm Stadium on February 12, 2023 in Glendale, Arizona. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
This is Rihanna’s world and we’re all just living in it.
That’s at least how it felt this week in the entertainment news world (a welcome, much-needed and often quite therapeutic reprieve from the real news world).
The singer hovered high above the field at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, for her Super Bowl halftime performance (that annual gig in the US that has some sports match before and after it).
She managed to put on an incredible 13-minute-long performance of a bunch of her most iconic hits (and she has a few). Standing on a transparent rectangular platform that raised and lowered as she belted out the lyrics to her hits over the turf where the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs were battling moments earlier, the Barbados-born singer and entrepreneur revealed her second pregnancy to an audience of literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
The performance was incredible — it was also an astute business move. Rihanna has not released an album since 2016. She clearly doesn’t need to. In the years since, she’s started and grown her cosmetics business Fenty Beauty, which got a massive plug during her Super Bowl show (halfway through her performance, she blotted her nose with Invisimatte Instant Setting & Blotting Powder by Fenty). In fact, Rihanna wasn’t even paid for her performance — but Fenty received a level of marketing exposure that is very hard to buy.
What was impressive about Rihanna’s performance weren’t the high notes, the big dance moves or costume changes (of which there were none) — it was the fact that this was her first solo performance event in seven years, and her first since becoming a mother for the first time nine months ago, and she just went out and freaking nailed it. Pregnant new mum Rihanna absolutely nailed it. It was a spectacular musical performance, a great marketing move and a badass pregnancy announcement, all within 13 minutes. In that sense, it was nothing if not pure genius (and she also apparently p****d off Donald Trump, just as an extra little bonus treat).
Earlier this year, she had said that her decision to perform this year was inspired by her almost 1-year-old son. “It is important for me to do it this year. It is important for representation, it is important for my son to see that,” she said at an Apple Music press conference.
As Belinda Luscombe wrote in Time, those who tuned into the Super Bowl to watch incredible displays of human strength and fitness definitely got it - especially during Rihanna’s show. “It’s genuinely impressive to be able to throw, catch, and run with such accuracy in the face of such intense physical opposition, but it’s not exactly like making a whole new human being. If you tuned in to the game for an epic display of toughness, you saw it, just perhaps in more ways than you expected,” Luscombe eloquently put it.
I cannot imagine what it is like to sing and dance like that while pregnant (or even while not pregnant, really). When I was pregnant, putting my shoes on felt like an endurance event. Doing a three-point turn while driving, with that damn seatbelt over my bump, would be enough to leave me breathless. Rihanna’s show was a display of pure raw physical and emotional power, something that transcends music. By deciding to turn that moment into her pregnancy reveal, Rihanna showed the world that her body is hers to control. A powerful statement at any point, but particularly in the post-Roe era.
Not content with this, Rihanna capped off the week by being revealed as the cover of British Vogue, alongside partner A$AP Rocky and their son, born in May last year. The singer was reportedly already pregnant when the photos were taken, but did not know it yet.
Rihanna’s son is not even a year old yet. She is still very much in the throes of new motherhood - and now pregnant as well. And she’s also out there, on her own terms, showing the world anything a man can do (have a successful career, build and promote a massive business), a woman can do while pregnant. On a hovering platform high up in a stadium, for millions to watch, looking freaking fierce.
Her lyrics might be catchy as hell but they’re almost collateral — this fierceness is Rihanna’s true power.
Timothée Chalamet had long been interested in playing Bob Dylan.