The halftime show has been referred to in a couple of other threads, but I wondered it it might merit a separate thread.
I’m wondering what folk thought of it. Was it great? So so? Just a typical halftime medley?
I’m not a consumer of Rhianna’s music, tho I was aware that she was a BIG STAR. I didn’t recognize any of her songs, so I just sorta viewed it as a spectacle. The floating stages kinda impressed me at first, but then it seemed like a “one-trick.” That and the masses of white clad dancers.
I read today that she is pregnant. My wife and I wondered what her costume was hiding and what it was revealing.
If you are a Rhianna fan, did you love it or feel “meh”? If you were not a Rhianna fan, what was your emotional response?
She impressed me as just another in a long line of female popular singers of whom I’ve been mostly ignorant. Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Beyonce, … Tho with those others, I at least recognized a hook/chorus from 1-2 of their most popular tunes.
I’m not a fan, but I don’t dislike her, either. I enjoyed some of it, recognizing exactly one song. I just kinda bopped along with it. The spectacle didn’t do very much for me, though I was also busy preparing supper during that time. (I have a relatively fixed time I have to eat due to medication.)
And since it came up earlier: lip synching doesn’t bother me all that much anymore. I honestly wasn’t sure that it wasn’t required. Not having to actually deal with the live sound makes sense in such a place.
That said, with my lack of attention, I also didn’t really notice it ever being off, but other people have said they did notice. Being off with lip sync can definitely be a distraction.
Well, I thought the outfits were ridiculous, but then I noticed she is pregnant. I guess she wanted to minimize that with that baggy and shapeless “dress” (or whatever). So she wouldn’t stand out as looking truly odd, I’m thinking that making everyone dress like that would make it less noticeable?
I thought it was a nice show. Not my personal favorite in terms of music style, but she’s a big star with lots of fans, and I think the show was impressively staged. My take on the pregnancy and costuming is that her costume highlighted that fact rather than hiding it, or at least made little effort to hide it.
The dancers must have burned about 10,000 calories during the show. Their synchronization and athleticism was pretty impressive. The platforms were pretty cool. As far as the music goes, I’ve never heard her before and don’t think I’ll every make an effort to hear it again.
It was quite impressive. Rihanna isn’t my thing as music goes, but that was a top notch professional show.
It followed last year’s wonderful hip hop medley, which is a very tough act to follow, though. By comparison it was going to suffer. We are, thankfully, WAY past the days when they’d just send out a college marching band or Up With People.
I’ve always been disappointed when I went to a concert and what I saw was not “live.” My preferences have magnified in the past couple of decades when I’ve concentrated more and more on completely acoustic music.
At the very least, there were recorded backing vocals. Not sure if they were Rianna overdubbing herself, or backing vocalists. So it struck me as odd when she’d stop singing and pull the mic away, yet vocals continued. And - of course - there was no band (until the very end.). So I often think, if they are singing in front of recorded music, is it essentially karaoke? What does “live” mean? (Not to get into the recent “live album” thread discussion.)
Many pop singers seem to include dancing in their performance. Or overall movements to convey their personality. Like Shakira perhaps? Rhianna seemed somewhat static and wooden, other than a couple of moves that seemed sorta like awkward calisthenics to me. Nothing wrong with someone with great pipes just parking and barking - but I didn’t get the idea that that was the image Rhianna was trying to portray.
Yeah - it did that. I thought the rap halftime a couple of years ago was ridiculous given the venue. But then it made me think it was more about the spectacle than the performer. Which sorta lessens the performer as a singer/musician/performer in my opinion (other than as someone who can present a spectacle.). If she was lip-synching, and not doing unique moves - why couldn’t it have been any reasonably fit Black woman up on the floating platform?
A couple times I thought to myself she looked a little pregnant, but then a second later, she didn’t , so I just chalked it up to lighting, clothing, angle, etc. Then I read afterward she was pregnant, so she was definitely showing.
I thought it was an OK performance, I’ve never been a huge fan of Rhianna, but I knew the songs she performed. After the game, I got sucked down a YouTube wormhole of past halftime performances. Prince still reigns supreme, imo. I saw some documentary on his performance where the producer called him the morning of the show with the bad news that the forecast showed rain during the game, and halftime. Prince replied, “Can you make it rain harder?”
Well, she looked awfully pregnant. I guess she had to work with that.
I would agree the greatest show in Super Bowl history was Prince, but Prince was one of the most legendary live performers who ever walked the earth. My sister and brother in law saw him live in Toronto and reported that the man’s showmanship was superhuman; the show went longer than three hours and he played every song as if his life depended on it.
I really couldn’t tell how pregnant she was. My wife said something like, “She looks like she is carrying postpartum weight,” and I responded, “Oh? Did she have a kid recently?” She looked like she was carrying a little weight in her stomach, but I don’t tend to research a performer’s current health condition when forming my expectations and reactions to a performance. If she WANTED to make it clear that she was pregnant, should coulda worn a less baggy outfit.
I wasn’t judging her as a pregnant performer or as a performer who recently gave birth.
I was a HUGE fan of early Prince, enjoyed seeing him live in 79 IIRC. I was underwhelmed by his halftime - but rarely appreciate best-hit medleys. But at least it was pretty obviously “live”!
Her bulky costume at first made me think she was going to reveal other costumes beneath it as she moved through her medley but it wasn’t long before I realized she is (quite) pregnant. That led me to conclude that the backup dancers where dressed as they were to keep it uniform with her costume and not call attention to her body covering outfit. Didn’t hide her bump, but seemed the best way to handle it. I can’t decide how I feel about her dancing. To me it was awkward and I was kind of worried about her. On the other hand, it’s also pretty ballsy to star in a halftime show, however many months along she is. Overall, big thumbs up from me.
I had it on, but it didn’t grab my attention. Mrs. dirtball was a little more into it.
For context, though, if I were in charge of hiring Super Bowl halftime talent, I’d check out the local music scenes in various cities, find some significantly-better-than-average psychedelic jam band, put them on the SB stage in their regular street clothes with no pyrotechnics (except maybe for some spiffy lighting), no dancers, no stage sets or props, and just have them stretch out one spacey, bluesy song for the entire show.
Which is exactly why the Super Bowl organizers will never hire me to find a halftime act.
I’m a fan of her music. I thought the medley format was straight out of the 70s, just a little hint of a lot of songs. I wish she had Eminem or Jay-Z make a cameo or two, to liven it up.
To me, it was a sex ed class. Surround yourself with sperm and you may end up pregnant. Those dancers’ costumes were right out of the Woody Allen sperm scene from Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex.
I was underwhelmed. The hip hop show was fantastic last year. In another year, one of my favorite moments was Missy Elliott coming to bail out Katy Perry from what would have been an underwhelming performance.
I think Rihanna would have benefited from another act or two.
These are my thoughts too. As someone who would actually prefer they skip the halftime show altogether (and shrink half time down to 15 minutes), I thought it was fine. I probably heard her name before this Super Bowl, but I couldn’t have told you a single fact about her. Now I know a bit, so ignorance fault a little.
I expected / hoped Eminem was going to show up and perform Love the Way you Lie with her, but I guess it wouldn’t have been worth his time seeing as she just did snippets of songs.
Yeah, @Chingon I am kind of a bit amused at the proclaimed lack of Ri-Ri awareness. Come on folks it was not that many years ago you couldn’t get away from under her umberella, ella, ella, hey hey.
really
But hey, I like the idea itself of bringing in some local/regional star or up-and-comer in the same genre as the headliner(s) as “featured player” or opener. Of course that however gets entangled with the contracting issues with the marquee acts and exclusivity arrangements and so forth.
really