Rihanna took the stage at the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show to perform some of her biggest hit songs from over the years. The Barbados-bred superstar has had 14 songs of hers reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but only a handful of those smashes made it onto her Super Bowl setlist.
Rihanna performed at the Super Bowl halftime show
Rihanna confirmed that she would be performing at the Super Bowl LVII halftime show with a September 2022 Instagram post of her hand holding a football. With eight studio albums and nearly two decades in the public eye, Rihanna was overdue for a Super Bowl halftime show. Her performance at the 2023 show was her cementing her legacy as an artist and a public persona.
Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show surprised fans around the world with her high-flying theatrics and setlist consisting of many beloved songs. Rihanna appeared on a floating platform in the middle of Glendale, Arizona’s State Farm Stadium, strapped in as the platform moved up and down.
Rihanna performed 6 of her 14 No. 1 hits at the Super Bowl halftime show
Rihanna opened her halftime show with “B**** Better Have My Money” and ran through iconic songs from her career throughout the 13-minute show. Among those songs were six of her 14 total No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: “Only Girl (In the World)”, “We Found Love,” “Rude Boy,” “Work,” “Umbrella,” and “Diamonds.”
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Rihanna has five other No. 1 hits as the lead artist and three as a collaborator. Her first No. 1 hit, “SOS,” put her on the map as a pop singer to be reckoned with. The others — “Take a Bow,” “Disturbia,” “S&M,” and the Drake collab “What’s My Name?” — each highlighted Rihanna in a different musical context, showcasing her versatility. She also earned No. 1s on the Hot 100 with the T.I. collab “Live Your Life” and the Eminem collabs “Love the Way You Lie” and “The Monster.”
Although it wasn’t performed as a full song, elements of “S&M” made their way into Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show while she performed her smash Calvin Harris collab “We Found Love.”
She revealed her pregnancy during the show
Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show was special not just because it was the “Pon de Replay”‘s singer’s first on-stage performance in years, but her return to the stage after becoming a mother. Rih and A$AP Rocky welcomed a son together in May 2022, and it marked a turning point in Rihanna’s personal life.
Her halftime show performance did more than just show she can do a Super Bowl halftime show less than a year after giving birth. It was also a sly reveal that she’s pregnant once again with her second child. As the camera panned out from her face as she opened the show with her 2015 hit “B*** Better Have My Money,” her belly stuck out of a bright red jacket as she rubbed it with her hand. Representatives for the singer confirmed later that night that Rih was indeed expecting baby no. 2.
