Barbadian pop superstar Rihanna has been tapped to headline the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show on February 12th, 2023 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ. The singer’s upcoming appearance was announced on Sunday in a series of posts by the NFL, new Halftime Show presenting sponsor Apple Music, and the league’s official live music entertainment strategists, the Jay-Z-led Roc Nation.
This is not the first time Rihanna’s name has come up in Super Bowl Halftime Show conversations. Back in 2019, in the heat of the Colin Kaepernick-inspired National Anthem protests that swept the sporting world, she famously turned down the NFL‘s invitation for her to perform at the league’s championship game.
She later confirmed her stance in an interview with Vogue. “Absolutely,” she said when asked if she declined the Halftime Show opportunity in solidarity with Kaepernick’s demonstrations against police brutality and social injustice toward people of color. “I couldn’t dare do that. For what? Who gains from that? Not my people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”
Later that year, the NFL seemed to address that public image issue when it brought on Shawn Carter (a.k.a Jay-Z) and Roc Nation as “strategists” for its outsize live music spectacles. “With its global reach, the National Football League has the platform and opportunity to inspire change across the country,” Carter said upon the announcement of the partnership. “Roc Nation has shown that entertainment and enacting change are not mutually exclusive ideas – instead, we unify them. This partnership is an opportunity to strengthen the fabric of communities across America.”
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Under the guidance of Jay-Z and Roc Nation, subsequent Super Bowl Halftime Shows have actively reached out to a more diverse audience. Jennifer Lopez and Shakira headlined the 2020 show in Atlanta alongside Latin superstars like Bad Bunny and J Balvin. In 2021, The Weeknd served as the entertainment at a pandemic-altered Super Bowl in Tampa. In 2022, the Halftime Show went full hip-hop with a Dr. Dre-led blowout in Inglewood featuring Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, 50 Cent, and more.
Even beyond the NFL-related context, the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show announcement is an exciting one for Rihanna fans. While the singer has remained busy in recent years with her Fenty fashion house under the LVMH umbrella, her new son with A$AP Rocky, and her various humanitarian efforts, she has not released a new album since 2016’s ANTI and any live performances have been few and far between.
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