Rihanna stunned audiences with her performance at the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show yesterday (Feb 12) at Arizona’s State Farm Stadium.
The show marked the pop megastar’s first public performance in five years, opening proceedings with her hit Bitch Better Have My Money while floating on a translucent platform.
A medley of her biggest hits followed, including Where Have You Been, Only Girl (In the World), We Found Love, Run This Town, Work, Wild Thoughts, Pour It Up, Umbrella, Diamonds, and more.
The singer was surrounded by a mob of dancers all dressed in white and wearing sunglasses, flocking around her on a series of clear platforms that floated across the arena in several formations.
The performance ended with Rihanna ascending into the sky on her own platform while performing an explosive rendition of Diamonds.
The singer’s representative also confirmed after the show that she is expecting, as her appearance in a red jumpsuit and bustier immediately sparked rumours that she is pregnant again. She had her first child with A$AP Rocky last May.
Rihanna made her musical return last year with the Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated Lift Me Up and Born Again, along with her contributions to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
In 2019, she starred in Childish Gambino’s Guava Island and published a 504-page “visual autobiography” - adding to her list of film credits that include Ocean’s 8 (2018), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017), Bates Motel (2017), and more. In recent years, she has been heavily involved with her Fenty fashion line, which is now part of LVMH
Speaking to a pre-Bowl press conference last week, she said that she is “open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new, things that are different, things that are off, weird, might never make sense to my fans. I just want to play; I want to have fun with music.”