Review: Rihanna fumbled her Super Bowl halftime show, rushing through snippets of 13 songs in 13 minutes

There were eye-popping fireworks during Rihanna’s Sunday Super Bowl halftime show at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., but they were literally up in the air — and not on the stage.

The sky was illuminated several times by pyrotechnic bursts so fiery and immense they might have made the members of the rock band Kiss seethe with envy. Rihanna herself was up in the air at the start and conclusion of her carefully rehearsed set, performing on a small suspended platform that hovered high above the field before descending and rising once or twice again.

But her impeccably choreographed show seemed decidedly earthbound, at least musically speaking, whether she was elevated or on the main stage on the field.

In what may have been a Super Bowl record, the Barbados-born vocal superstar rushed through 13 songs in 13 minutes, a pace that put even frenetic punk-rock pioneers The Ramones in their breathless “one-two-three-four!” prime to shame.

Dressed in a billowy red jumpsuit that did not conceal the fact she is pregnant again after giving birth to her first child last May, Rihanna opened with her 2015 hit, “Bitch Better Have My Money” — and concluded with her 2012 hit, “Diamonds.”

She squeezed in 11 more songs between them, including “Umbrella,” the EDM-flavored “Only Girl (In the World)” and the reggae-tinged “Rude Boy.” Or, to be more precise, she squeezed in snippets of songs, some so fleeting that you almost missed them if you blinked more than once.

That tally was higher, if you included the elements of some of her other hits that were referenced, however briefly, in several of her selections.

Rihanna’s truncated versions of “Work,” “Wild Thoughts” and “Birthday Cake” were dispensed with in less then three minutes, combined. A mash-up of “Pour It Up” and “Pose” lasted barely 60 seconds.

By comparison, The Weeknd’s performance of eight of his hits at the 2021 halftime show — the first Super Bowl held during a pandemic — seemed almost leisurely.

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Of course, the halftime show has long been a hits-driven affair, as everyone from Prince and U2 to Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson demonstrated in the years they headlined.

But Rihanna crammed so many songs — make that, parts of songs — into her set that few of them had a chance to breathe, let alone gain traction and take flight. It was almost as if she was creating an ADD-fueled live shuffle mode, except this shuffle mode was seemingly designed to cut off nearly every song almost before they could land.

The phrase “live shuffle mode” comes with a caveat, since Rihanna appeared to be lip-syncing as often as not. Performing in public for the first time since her 2016 “Anti” concert tour concluded, she exuded the winning sense of confidence one would expect from self-made billionaire who was more focused on making a big visual impact rather than a musical one.

She was surrounded by dozens of male dancers, all dressed in identical white hooded outfits surrounded her. A band of musicians was fleetingly shown at one point during “Birthday Cake,” but they were holding their instruments rather than playing them.

Rihanna had first been invited to headline the Super Bowl halftime show in 2019. She declined the invitation, she said at the time, to show solidarity with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was ousted from the NFL for taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem at games to protest racial injustice in the U.S.

“I just couldn’t be a sellout,” Rihanna told Vogue magazine, adding that appearing at the 2019 halftime show would have been an affront to Black people everywhere. “I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization (the NFL) that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”

What changed her mind four years later? Rihanna hasn’t said, although she told reporters last week that she felt empowered by giving birth to her first child last May. The fact that she is now visibly pregnant again is a key reason the internet blew up during her Sunday night Super Bowl halftime show. Sadly, it wasn’t because she delivered an unforgettable musical performance.

Prior to the start of the game, country music star Chris Stapleton performed the national anthem. Accompanying himself on electric guitar, his slow, bluesy version was intensely soulful and blissfully free of the flashy vocal histrionics that have have long been de rigueur for Super Bowl anthem singers.

He was preceded by a Babyface’s pleasant but innocuous version of “America The Beautiful” and Emmy Award-winner Sheryl Lee Ralph’s soaring rendition of “Lift Every Voice And Sing” — widely known as the Black national anthem — which marked the first time it had been performed live live inside a stadium for the Super Bowl.