Moments after Rihanna stepped off the Super Bowl LVII halftime stage Sunday night time at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., her consultant confirmed what her efficiency had advised: The singer is pregnant along with her second youngster.
It was, as being pregnant reveals go, not fairly on the theatrical stage of Beyoncé’s stomach rub at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. But for Rihanna, who final yr gave start to her first youngster, it was a stroke of efficiency savvy nonetheless — possibly the solely gesture that would outshine, and reframe, the present she had simply given.
Rihanna hasn’t launched an album since “Anti” in 2016, and lots of in her fervent fan base took her willingness to carry out at the Super Bowl this yr as an indication that her return to music may be imminent. Perhaps she would announce a brand new single or album, or possibly a tour.
Instead, she used considered one of pop music’s greatest levels to assert that regardless of all of that collective anticipation, she had different issues to concentrate on: a non-public life to return to. So if her precise onstage supply had been barely weary, effectively, there have been extra essential issues to concentrate on.
In 13 minutes, Rihanna casually carried out snippets of 12 hits, universally recognized songs that don’t require a lot in the means of fluffing or bombast. The closest she got here to frisson, to sass, to authority, to verve got here a bit of after the midway level of the set.
Just after the acquainted horn fusillade of “All of the Lights” boomed from the audio system, Rihanna took a compact from the outstretched hand of considered one of her dancers along with her proper hand, utilized two dabs of powder — a nod to Fenty Beauty, which has been a much bigger skilled focus for her than music in recent times — and returned it earlier than grabbing the microphone along with her left hand from one other dancer.
Then she launched into the hook of “All of the Lights,” a decade-plus-old collaboration with Ye (previously Kanye West), whose antisemitic remarks late final yr have made him a pariah. She adopted that music instantly with “Run This Town,” one other collaboration with Ye (and Jay-Z).
A fast cosmetics advert? Sure. An implicit assertion of help for an embattled peer? Why not. Rihanna — considered one of the essential pop hitmakers of the twenty first century — wants the Super Bowl lower than the Super Bowl wants her, and her efficiency was a grasp class in doing precisely sufficient. She handled it like many individuals method their skilled obligations when their private life is asking: dutiful, frivolously enthused, a bit of exhausted, trying to work the angles ever so barely.
The queen of nonchalance, Rihanna first appeared Sunday night time on a stage floating above the 50-yard line (a gesture cribbed from Ye’s 2016 Saint Pablo tour) singing “Bitch Better Have My Money.” She was tethered to the platform, limiting her maneuvering, however even when she reached the floor she didn’t overemphasize dance, as a substitute holding sturdy courtroom at the heart of 100-plus dancers, sharing of their actions however by no means outdoing them. During “Work,” she led them as if she have been a tutor calling out strikes however not taking part in them.
Rihanna’s hits are plentiful — she has charted greater than 60 instances on the Billboard Hot 100 — and they’re diverse. But there was no true thematic by means of line to this informal revue of a dozen deeply beloved songs. Mostly, she leaned into the up-tempo facet of her catalog — “Where Have You Been,” “Only Girl (in the World)” — with nods to her Caribbean heritage on “Work” and “Rude Boy.” At the set’s finish, she emphasised her big-picture, one-word-title smashes, “Umbrella” and “Diamonds,” which prioritize melodrama over feeling.
Rihanna is many issues — a brand new mom, a billionaire mogul in trend and cosmetics, an astonishingly dependable pop star with a deep catalog. But she isn’t a present hitmaker. And she had not carried out a present of this scale since 2016.
So in its advertising and marketing, the Super Bowl amplified the way it was a coup to land her most seen effort in years. During promotional teases, Apple Music’s Ebro Darden portentously intoned, “The wait. Is almost. Over.”
In essence, the occasion was her look. The occasion was the occasion. There have been no company, regardless of the frequency and energy of her collaborations. No costume adjustments, regardless of her standing as a trend innovator — she wore an all-red outfit, eradicating and including layers all through.
Though the efficiency was temporary and hurried, it however felt gradual. There was little variation in tone or power, no aesthetic nods to the frivolously themed set record. It was a routine designed to set off long-honed pleasure facilities, not ignite new fervor — a triumph of foregone conclusion.
That Rihanna appeared in any respect is a testomony to the methods wherein the N.F.L. has been profitable in papering — or performing — over its controversies. She declined to carry out at the Super Bowl in 2019, an period wherein turning down a gig on considered one of the world’s greatest levels — a retort to the N.F.L.’s response to Colin Kaepernick’s activism — felt political. But the involvement of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation with the league in the years following has remade the halftime present each musically and socioculturally.
From an leisure perspective, that’s been for the finest. And for Rihanna, enjoying halftime is a milestone befitting the scope of her achievements. But her present wasn’t overtly political, and even significantly celebratory of her litany of hits. Instead, it served as one thing of a placeholder. She’d come to carry out, sure. But she additionally has extra urgent issues to attend to.
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