What they said… and Drake being on that list didn’t surprise me at all. “Hotline Bling” and “God’s Plan” were everywhere when he released them (and Hotline Bling lives on through a great meme template).
For me, it’s just that after 50 years of hearing their music, I’m heartily sick of it. If I never hear Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger again, my life will not be lessened.
For Drake, I would have to say it’s his music. I don’t know much about him beyond that he’s from Canada and that he seems to be featured on a lot of artists’ tracks other than his own. My introduction to him was “Started from the Bottom.” I definitely do not know the body of his work – it’s immense – but probably a dozen songs or so. And I can usually tell a Drake tune by ear just by the beat and general vibe of the tune. My first and third grader like to play Song Quiz on Alexa (Amazon Echo). It’s a Name That Tune type of game. I’ve taught them how to guess Drake songs based on their beat (often a minimalistic trap-type beat) with >50% success rate.
Drake being on the list isn’t surprising. Drake > Rihanna was, just a little.
But then Rihanna outselling Beyoncé and Taylor Swift was also not how I would have called it, before I saw the numbers.
I’m mildly surprised that Rihanna is ahead of Beyoncé in that department. I would have guessed the other way around, myself.
I’m never going to be the audience for a halftime show even when I was in the demographic. I’ve always been much more interested in people playing instruments well rather than singers. In my teens and 20s I didn’t listen to Top 40 and I’m not starting now.
If you quiz me to name you any Rihanna songs I would fail miserably. I still recognized about half of the songs played just from living. Not my thing but I recognize making a good pop song does take talent.
I did see an article saying it was a no frills show. That’s my problem with it. I already know they are not going to pick my favorite artist. I want frills. I thought frills were the point of a super bowl halftime show. I thought the platforms were a good visual to start then I realized that’s all it was going to be. Platforms up and down, Rihanna in red pregnant dancing and white sperm choreography. That was fine to start but having the entire show be that made me lose interest. The obvious lip-syncing/ back up track annoyed me. The random appearance of a band not playing their instruments confused me. The lack of any guests surprised me. All together I would say it was generally forgettable.
Well, your own cite notes that may not be the case; look at the last column.
Music sales today, of course, are wildly different than they used to be. From the 1960s until fairly recently, music was overwhelmingly purchased in the form of albums; now it’s largely purchased as singles (again, like it was before the rise of the album.) In 2019 - I went before the pandemic - the best selling album in the Western world was “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” by Billie Eilish, which according to one source I found sold 6.3 million copies. In the 1990s that wouldn’t have cracked the top TEN. The 90s were the golden age of music sales. It wouldn’t even have been close; every year, many artists sold well over 10,000,000 albums. In 1999 Britney Spears sold over 25 million copies of “Baby One More Time” and that wasn’t nearly good enough to be number 1. (Backstreet Boys were.) Rihanna CAN’T be selling 250,000,000 albums in today’s music market. No one could. It’s not possible; she would have had to have every album she’s ever put out sell like Thriller in an era no album sells that well, and going through her claimed album sales by album, sources generally agree they all sold between three and eleven million copies (a truly astonishing thing to do eight times.)
So when they say she’s sold 250000000 of something, what are they saying? Does it include singles downloaded? If so, that seems very reasonable, but you cannot compare that to an artist selling albums.
That said, it is shockingly difficult to get a clear picture on actual album sales figures, anyway. My note above about 1999 album sales is contradicted by many other sources; everyone seems to agree Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, DMX, Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, and Celine Dion were among the big sellers, and Santana had a huge comeback hit, but no one can agree what the damned numbers WERE. I find this bizarre, since key people are paid by units sold, but it’s genuinely impossible to know for sure.
What we do know for sure is that music consumption is radically different now. Where Rihanna is a genius is in creating revenue streams in fashion and beauty products. Artists aren’t paid from selling recordings as well as was once the case; they’re being ripped off, to be honest, even worse than they used to be.
Rihanna has a LOT of high charting singles:
Including a lot of collaborations - “All of the Lights” with Kanye West, “Work” with Drake, “Monster” and “Love the Way You Lie” with Eminem.
Yeah, I see Beyoncé has a bunch of hits, but Rihanna does have more. Once again, I would have thought the other way around. Probably because Beyoncé has many more Grammies and seems to be a little more visible in my pop culture sphere (though she was quiet for awhile).
I feel like Beyonce may have better marketing than Rihanna. Plus being married to Jay-Z helps her image (as being married to her helps his). I feel like they’ve become this otherworldly royal couple of pop music, which gives her this “larger-than-life” persona. I mean, Beyonce releases a single or an album and it seems like the media loses its damn mind (it’s similar with Adele). Everyone, even people who don’t pay attention much to pop culture, seems to hear stuff about it. That may be why people think of Beyonce as the Queen Bey.
There was a reason I was specific about what kind of sales I was talking about.
I know that, I certainly got over the surprise right away.
Rihanna is one of those artists where, when hearing a medley of their music, you find yourself thinking, “Oh yeah, and that one, too.”
Hmm. She kinda is on the level of the Beatles, and more successful than Elvis. I bet a lot of young people couldn’t name a single Elvis song. Or name each of the Beatles.
People aren’t just saying they never heard of her, or couldn’t name any of her songs. They’ve been saying they also didn’t recognize any of what she sang, which is interesting because she’s one of the most successful recording artists of all time. She’s had immense popularity. It would be like saying you didn’t recognize any songs by Madonna, and had never heard of her, during the 80s or 90s.
This is from her Wikipedia page.
I’m over 60 years old and I still try to keep up with current pop music. I admit it takes a bit of effort: I try to pay attention to what I’m hearing around me, When I read an article about some artist I never heard of, I check them out.
For me, the effort is worth it, because there’s nothing I like better than to discover new music that I love. It’s really the only form of entertainment I really like.
I listed to the radio in the 80s and 90s. I don’t now. If she’s not on 70s station or The Bridge on SiriusXM, I won’t hear her music. (Slight exaggeration, of course)
My wife still listens to local FM radio in her car. (It’s an old car with an old fashioned radio and nothing else.) I hear a lot of current music when I’m with her.
Some of the lack of Rihanna awareness is real, not just self-proclaimed. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the umbrella song you’re referencing, or, if I’ve heard it, I didn’t know it was her.
No, actually, it’s not. As @Alessan pointed out, streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, plus near ubiquitous earbuds and personal headphones, make pop music not nearly as widely broadcast it was in '80s and '90s. We all walk around in our own bubbles, to use his metaphor.
I can solemnly affirm that the only song I recognized was “Umbrella”. And that’s not some sort of grumpy-old-white-guy stealth brag - I enjoyed what I heard from her. Again, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with her music; just that she hasn’t been in my bubble.
Rihanna’s net worth is 1.7 BILLION? Wow, impressive. 34 years old.
I guess I stopped listening to Top 40 radio around 2010. I would have preferred a medley that featured Disturbia, Take a Bow and Pon de Replay.
I think the first time I realized what some of Madonna’s songs were was when my wife dragged me to some step classes while in law school, and she identified the songs.
Currently, there is just no situation outside of something like the Super Bowl or SNL in which I hear modern music, and even if I recognize it, that I am informed of the performer. About the best that happens is if a singer has a very distinctive voice - like maybe Billie Eilish. But if I hear a woman singing I don’t know if is is Rihanna, Beyonce, Adele, or I don’t know who else are big female singers these days. Maybe if I listened to their music enough, their voices and styles might become apparent to me, but I have no interest in putting in that effort.
I’m not bragging or doing anything other than stating fact when I say I listened to Umbrella and have no recollection of ever having heard it before. In fact, during the halftime performance, the songs sounded so similar to each other that I asked my wife how many songs she had sung. I guessed 5 or 6. Was shocked to later see the medley included something like 12. I do not enjoy superhero movies, so I did not see Wakanda. Perhaps if I had, and I I stuck through the credits, I might have recognized Rihanna’s name.
Just about the only time I listen to music these days is in the car, and then it is almost always NPR or a CD I own. I’m sure I could play any number of bluegrass and oldtime tunes for many of you, and you would not know the performers, be able to distinguish the songs, or remember them tomorrow. Ever hear of Flat and Scruggs? Bill Monroe? Rhiannon Giddens? Name any of their songs? So what? Different people have different taste, and some of our tastes aren’t reflected in what is the most popular at the moment.
But today is a far cry from way back when, when Elvis and the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. And then maybe on a musical-comedy variety hour or special. (Or even sang/played the theme song for a hit sitcom!)
Kudos to those older folk who enjoy and keep up with current music. It just is not something that has appealed to me for several decades. And, of course, there is the reinforcing aspect in that the less you expose yourself to something, the less you are interested in it, etc.