By Jacob Coleman
The Super Bowl is a big deal. I realize that I might as well claim that the sky is blue, but think about it for a second. In an era where pop culture seems to be increasingly splintered as the internet allows us to dive deep into any niche we want, the Super Bowl is one of the last true monocultural events left. Everyone knows about it. Most people watch it, even if they never watched any NFL games before that Sunday. Brands pay millions of dollars just to book a 30-second ad spot. Of the 30 most watched TV broadcasts in American history, 29 of them are Super Bowls (the curious exception being the 1983 finale of M*A*S*H). Despite all this, the halftime show is bigger.
Look, I’m a diehard Chiefs fan. I grew up in Kansas; I love watching them play every week, and Patrick Mahomes has quickly become an all-time great quarterback. This year’s Super Bowl was great. It was a rare instance where there was constant action and it felt like I was watching the two best teams in the league. The Chiefs taking home the Lombardi Trophy doesn’t hurt either. Even with all of that in mind, in a few years, I’ll most likely remember Rihanna’s halftime show more than the game. Even if it wasn’t Rihanna’s first concert in half a decade, it still would’ve been huge. As it was, it was monumental. Yet, much like Rihanna herself, it was defined by both its presence and its absence.
First and foremost, Rihanna’s halftime show had some serious hits. Just by living in the world for the past 20 years, I could absentmindedly hum along to the majority of her set. For that matter, I could create a similarly ubiquitous medley out of songs that didn’t make the cut. “Stay,” “Disturbia,” “Pon de Replay” and “Love on the Brain” all have hundreds of millions of Spotify streams, but none of them were present in her performance. Of the songs she performed, it was hard to argue with the selection. The euphoric drops on “We Found Love” ushered in a brief early-2010s period where festival DJs could be major pop stars. “Umbrella” has a hook so massive that my grandma probably knows it. Even “Pour It Up,” a relatively minor hit by Rihanna standards, still feels huge, and it helps that it’s a banger.
I don’t think I fully realized how central Rihanna is to modern pop music until this show. Between 2005, when her hypnotic dancehall banger “Pon de Replay” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and 2017, when she again reached No. 2 with DJ Khaled’s Santana-sampling “Wild Thoughts,” she appeared in the Top 10 of the Hot 100 over 30 times! That’s ridiculous! Her near-constant output over those 12 years made her defined by her mere presence almost as much as her actual music. For a while, we could be certain of death, taxes and a new Rihanna hit every few months. With that exhausting release schedule, we could hardly blame her for switching her status quo to the complete opposite.
Rihanna’s prolonged absence over the past few years made her halftime show a bigger deal than it might have otherwise been. In some ways, her show reflected that absence. There weren’t any big moments of spectacle like 50 Cent rapping “In Da Club” upside down or Mary J. Blige collapsing from sheer passion in 2022. There was nothing like this amazing and ridiculous introduction from Bruce Springsteen back in 2009. To me, the absence was the point. Rihanna is the spectacle. Her pregnancy probably placed some physical limitations on the show, but I doubt she would’ve been doing splits if she wasn’t pregnant. That’s not the vibe she was going for. Regardless, a concert performed on hovering Super Smash Bros.-esque platforms surrounded by parka-clad dancers is an absence of spectacle only by Super Bowl standards. I’m glad we got some cool visuals and stage effects in there, but I’m also glad the show let Rihanna’s stage presence speak for itself.
Also absent: new music! In the past five years, Rihanna has released a grand total of one song as a lead artist, that being the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack song “Lift Me Up” from 2022. “Lift Me Up” wasn’t on the setlist, and neither was anything else resembling new music. In all likelihood, we won’t get new Rihanna music for quite some time. But really, should we be expecting it? Artists being pushed to release new material after a particularly relevant moment or big hit is nothing new, but it’s not exactly beneficial. It can often lead to rushed work or unnecessary stress and strain on musicians, which isn’t conducive to great art. Rihanna is most likely at a point in her career where she can take all the time she wants to make new music, but most artists don’t have that luxury. As exciting as it is when our favorite artists drop albums, I think we should let them cook.
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