Rihanna performs 17 years of her musical career at the Super Bowl halftime show. PHOTO CREDIT: PBS
Rihanna’s halftime performance for the 57th Super Bowl was good. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but she did amazing with what she had.
The camera panned to her right away on a platform suspended in the sky, along with four other platforms, two to her right and two to her left, with backup dancers on them. I would’ve liked a more significant entrance, but I wasn’t too mad about it.
She started off her performance with “B*tch Better Have My Money (BBHMM)” and I thought that it was a really cool and strong song to start off on. A lot of people online weren’t happy with that song as a starter, but the rapping and choreography was a really good entrance into the performance.
The stage lowered onto the longer red strip stage and she transitioned into “Where Have You Been.” There was an added techno beat remix to it that I thought was really cool and the backup dancers really got into this song which was awesome. The entire time I was watching, I saw that Rihanna was dancing, but she wasn’t getting into it like she normally does; I’ll explain later.
She then went on to perform one of my favorite songs by her which is “Only Girl (In The World).” I really loved hearing her sing this, I thought that she killed it with this one and her vocals were so stable throughout the entire performance.
Then, she went on to perform a whole bunch of her other hits like “We Found Love,” “Rude Boy,” “Work” and “Wild Thoughts,” which I thought was the best part of the show. The transition between each of those four songs were really smooth and she made it so interesting when she transitioned from one song to another. The red lights against the backup dancers white outfits made them pop even more as they glided across the stage and down the stairs with her.
Something about Rihanna that I’ve noticed is that when she performs a whole bunch of songs, she makes sure to have smooth transitions in between each of her songs and she always chooses the best songs to perform. She makes such good mashups of her songs too that make the performance even better.
She mentioned in an interview with Entertainment Tonight prior to her performance that it was hard for her to choose which songs to put in her setlist because it was 17 years of work that she had to fish through. However, she decided on the setlist and she was very happy with what she chose.
Her performance was also very interesting because she didn’t have a special guest/collaboration join her on stage. It was just her for the entire 13 minutes, which was not a bad thing.
Now, I noticed at the beginning of the performance that she was holding her stomach, and I was looking and I said to my family “is she pregnant again?”
My entire family disagreed with me, but the entire time she was singing and dancing, we were all watching and observing her trying to figure out if she was actually pregnant or not. My mother mentioned that she wasn’t really dancing hard, and I kept saying I think she’s pregnant that’s why she’s not getting too into the dance.
Entertainment Tonight confirmed that Rihanna was pregnant with her second child on TikTok the next day, and everything made a lot more sense. The fact that she was on stage dancing like she did was incredible, and how she managed to sing and carry her strong voice while being the only performer made me love the show even more.
She ended the show with my favorite song by her, “Diamonds.” This to me was the perfect song to end with and I’m so glad that she did because it’s such a beautiful song and her voice was so angelic as she ended her performance.