Rihanna reveals pregnancy at Super Bowl half-time show

Rihanna delivered an electrifying and hit-heavy half-time show at Sunday's Super Bowl, but social media went into meltdown when the singer revealed an unexpected special guest.

In an interview last week, Rihanna was asked in if there would be any surprises during her performance at Arizona's State Farm Stadium.

Naturally, fans assumed she was talking about one of the many artists she's collaborated with during her illustrious career. A guest spot from Jay-Z, Drake or Eminem seemed both likely and in keeping with the half-time show tradition of surprise duets.

But Rihanna wasn't talking about any of them. Although nobody twigged at the time, she was in fact hinting that she was pregnant with her second child.

The singer may have failed to debut any new music during her performance at Sunday's Super Bowl, but the baby bump she debuted instead almost broke the internet.

Wearing an all-red custom jumpsuit by Loewe, Rihanna appeared on one of several floating platforms which soared high above the crowd, as a swarm of energetic dancers, all dressed in white, gathered below.

The crowd went wild as the singer launched straight into Better Have My Money - a somewhat ironic opener considering she is not being paid for her Super Bowl performance (as is custom for half-time headliners).

As the 34-year-old dazzled the audience from on high, her dancers performed beneath her at breakneck speed, in a display of razor-sharp choreography which they would maintain throughout the whole performance.

The singer rattled through several of her most recognisable hits, front-loading her set with some of her most danceable and up-tempo numbers including Where Have You Been and Only Girl (In The World).

It was a half-time show which was not short on spectacle. Fireworks were let off above the stadium, as she launched into the euphoric We Found Love.

While rumours that the star might take the opportunity to perform new music failed to materialise, the decision to rely on her extensive back catalogue, one of the strongest in pop music, was a sensible one.

The singer packed a huge number of hits into a tight 14-minute set, often only performing the first verse or chorus of certain songs. But monster hits such as Rude Boy were balanced with somewhat lesser-known fan favourites including Pour It Up.

Elsewhere, the set took advantage of some of her biggest collaborations - but without any of her collaborators joining her on stage, somewhat disappointingly.

As she performed Run This Town, All of the Lights and Wild Thoughts, there were no appearances from Jay-Z, Ye (formerly Kanye West) or DJ Khaled, who normally feature on those tracks.

But their absence didn't matter. By this point, everyone's attention was firmly on an entirely different, and very visible, special guest.

3. Only Girl (In The World)

8. Birthday Cake (instrumental) / Pour It Up

Confusion initially permeated social media as fans rushed to share their theories about Rihanna's apparent baby bump. Many pointed out the singer is known for her body positivity and could well have just been showing off her curvier figure following her previous pregnancy.

Although her bump was on display throughout, Rihanna did not draw attention to her pregnancy quite as explicitly as Beyoncé did at the MTV VMAs in 2011, where she dropped her microphone, unbuttoned her jacket and rubbed her belly.

But as Rihanna's set progressed on Sunday, viewers became increasingly confident she was pregnant, nine months after she and her partner A$AP Rocky welcomed their first child.

For viewers both in the stadium and at home, the speculation and debate about exactly which trimester she might be in only added to the fervent conversation.

Within an hour of Rihanna's performance drawing to a close, her representatives had confirmed the singer was indeed pregnant with her second child.

While some fans admitted to a tinge of disappointment that this will likely mean yet another delay to Rihanna's much-anticipated ninth studio album, the reaction on social media was overwhelmingly joyful.

Unlike last year's half-time show, which saw Eminem take the knee, Rihanna's set was distinctly light on political statements - something which may surprise those who remember her previous comments about the NFL.

In 2019, Rihanna turned down the opportunity to perform the half-time show. The singer confirmed to Vogue she had declined in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who controversially knelt during the national anthem in 2016 in protest against racism and police brutality. "I just couldn't be a sellout. I couldn't be an enabler," she said at the time.

Four years later, "taking the knee" is much more commonplace, particularly in light of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, and Rihanna's headlining of the Super Bowl is perhaps a sign of her approval of the NFL's progress in recent years.

Fans broadly agreed her performance was worth the wait, featuring a set list which she had joked earlier in the week had been through 39 drafts before it was finalised.

On the night, the annual jokes about the culture clash between pop music fans and sports fans were in full swing on social media, with Rihanna even embracing them herself.

Her clothing label manufactured T-shirts with the slogan: "Rihanna concert interrupted by football game. Weird but whatever." Model Cara Delevingne was among the fans seen sporting them at the game.

Fans of the Rihanna admit the singer doesn't necessarily have the best voice in music. It's more distinctive than it is powerful, the kind of voice you would recognise instantly as hers on the radio, even if you weren't familiar with the song.

"Rihanna never needed to over-sing anything; she always sounded too cool to emote," said Stereogum's Tom Breihan. ahead of her Super Bowl debut.

But what has set Rihanna apart from some of her peers is the sheer number of hits she has to her name. In the late noughties and early 2010s, she churned out chart-toppers faster than the industry's top songwriters could compose them.

She released seven albums in as many years, scoring a new worldwide hit every few weeks. As a result, the only disappointment with her set was the number of songs she simply didn't have room to squeeze in.

Her earlier hits, such as Pon de Replay and SOS, would have gone down a treat, as would the pounding Don't Stop The Music and the monster hit What's My Name (although we did get a tiny snippet of the latter right at the beginning, before she appeared on stage).

Others, such as the rather graphic S&M, were probably wise to avoid, given the Super Bowl's history with offending family audiences during the half-time show.

And surely everybody can all be grateful that her set wasn't dragged down by her most recent release - Lift Me Up from the soundtrack to Marvel's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. A perfectly nice song which deserves its Oscar nomination, but one which would not have worked at the Super Bowl.

Instead, Rihanna raced towards the end of her set with some of her most undeniable anthems, climaxing with her ode to British weather, Umbrella, and the rousing Diamonds.

It may not have grabbed the headlines for the reasons fans were expecting, but Rihanna gave us a half-time show they will never forget.