I love listening to new music too - except by “new”, I mean “new to me”. There is so much music from the past 6 decades that I’ve never heard before, so why would I focus on recent years?
It’s not like time exists any more - when everything is equally available, then nothing is new, and nothing is old. Welcome to the Musical Singularity.
I never listen to the radio. But I saw at least one movie (Home) that has several of her songs on the soundtrack. And I have never intentionally listened to Umbrella, but I heard it a lot when it was big. I guess just while I was out and about.
I’ve discovered lots of music I like by hearing it in movies, on shows, via streaming services that make suggestions. I don’t in any way try to stay current, but I listen to a lot of stuff produced in the last two decades, not just stuff from when I was in my 20s or whatever. One song or artist leads to others.
I also have kids, but I was doing all that before them, and was aware of Rihanna before them, too.
I don’t think it’s impossible to not have heard of Rihanna, obviously, but I also think that one would have to have a pretty thick-walled “bubble” for that to be the case.
Not really (with all due respect). Yes, of course there is still “popular music” these days, as in, songs known to listeners numbering in the tens or hundreds of millions. Of course, if by “popular” you mean “universal”, “known to literally everybody”, then there isn’t any music like that these days; but then, there never was.
Even back in the day, it was always possible for many, many out-of-touch oldsters or aficionados of different styles to avoid popular music. There was never any really universal contemporary music; it’s just that the hits of the old days feel more universal to us now than they actually were at the time, because now they’re part of history.
Well, yes, I suppose. But I was responding to @eschrodinger 's comparison of Rihanna to Madonna, in the '80s and '90s, and I think that the radically different landscape of music distribution between then and now makes that an invalid comparison. Back then - which is when I was in high school and college, so about the late '80s to '90s - my principle point of exposure to new music was via the radio. In Atlanta, there were a couple of Top 40 stations, a couple of country stations, one classical station - NPR - an “easy-listening” (mainly anodyne '70s ballads) station, a few “urban”, which is to say, black-oriented, stations, and a couple of “oldies” stations. People typically picked a genre, and listened to whatever that station played. So I was, will or nil, exposed to bands like Culture Club, R.E.M., Duran Duran, Midnight Oil, U2, because the alternative was to switch over to yacht rock, or country, or whatever. And if I found a band I liked, I would buy the album.
Nowadays, I can go to Pandora, enter an artist I like - Fiona Apple, say - and hear other artists the site’s algorithm thinks are similar and that I will like. Or go to YouTube, which is now my main source of music, and find a playlist of songs I’ve listened to recently. If I find an artist I like, I’ll subscribe to her YouTube channel, rather than buy an album (although oldster that I am, I did buy the CD of Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?) If I have no reason to seek out Rihanna - and I’ve said that I’m not especially a fan of her style of music, though I might check it out after watching her SB performance - I could hear a dozen songs and not know she sang them. It’s simply easier nowadays to, essentially, create your own radio station.
Again, @Alessan goes right to the heart of it.
“Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” (theme song to The Beverly Hillbillies); “Julie”, “Shake Sugaree”, and “S’iomadh Rid”; I can’t think of any of Bill Monroe’s songs off the top of my head (save for a cover of “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess), but I know he was an influential mandolin player.
Sorry, couldn’t resist the temptation to show off. I was in to bluegrass in college, and I discovered Rhiannon Giddens a few years ago, looking for Gaelic mouth music.
I admit that I’ve paid no attention to the pop scene since high school, which was a long time ago. My jam is alternative rock and its variants, with occasional splashes of dance electronic, New Age, and R&B. (I used to be big into K-pop but that ended when I stopped playing Pump It Up.) I’ll admit I have no familiarity with Rihanna, but that didn’t affect my perception of the halftime show (Dave & Busters has too much background noise to hear much music anyway.) It was just ordinary. Dare I say too ordinary for an annual spectacular like the Super Bowl. You have this one woman in what I thought was a needlessly complicated red number…I didn’t know she was pregnant…and a lot of what I presume were men in matching conservative white numbers, and they do a bunch of stuff at varying altitudes. And that’s about it. I agree that a costume change or some effects would’ve helped liven it up.
I’ll look up a couple of her songs when I have the time. I’m intrigued enough that I’m willing to take a taste, but it’s not going to lead to a newfound fandom or anything.
…and also her as a voice actor.
I was aware of her from the Carolina Chocolate Drops first. Not my usual style of music to listen to, but it came up in non-music channels, so I listened and liked.
As far as I know, I’ve never heard it. It has been a couple of decades since I’ve listened to much music (and that includes the music from my youth, not just the new-fangled stuff). If I’ve heard a new song in the last 15 or more years, it was 99% likely to have been in a TV commercial or the soundtrack of a TV show or movie. Have I heard a Rihanna song that way? Don’t know. Maybe. Maybe even the umbrella one. And that isn’t “proud ignorance”, that is just not paying attention to things that don’t interest me, like my never hearing of popular video games until they make a movie/TV show from it (such as the recent The Last of Us.
I had forgotten that she was in Home, so I have been exposed to her music. (Mostly I’ve tried to forget ever having seen Home, which is one of the worst brain-dead butcherings of an intelligently-written source novel that I have ever had the misfortune of seeing.)
I knew who she was, but I couldn’t have named any of her songs and I did not recognize any of the songs that she performed during the halftime show. That said, skimming her Wikipedia entry, I do recognize a number of her songs (although I would not have know they were hers).
But, like others, I’m also just not exposed to unfamiliar music. I don’t listen to the radio; I don’t hear music “out”; I must hear it in movies and televisions shows, but it doesn’t really register.
I just listened to “Umbrella” and it’s 100% unfamiliar to me. I listen to tons of new music, but I think this is all about channel - the sources I listen to for music have zero overlap with Rihanna.
I have basically zero awareness of Rihanna except “big name.” When I watched the show my impressions were:
I wish to add that I was actually surprised I didn’t recognize more songs, as I’ve heard about Rihanna a lot, and just assumed that I would have heard her most popular songs.
I’m just not someone who listens to pop music all that much. The last time I did was back when I was in college, and even that was due more to the TV I watched.
And, yes, the song I recognized was Umbrella, due to the repeated “-ella” gimmick.
To be fair, we all have areas of interest, and areas of ignorance. Although I’m fairly knowledgeable about current pop music, I’ve never seen any of the MCU movies, nor have I seen a single episode of Breaking Bad.
I haven’t listened to the radio in over 15 years but I feel like I hear her music all over the place, so I had a good chuckle at the folks who say they have never heard of Rihanna. That said, I also realize that if you don’t know her songs then you may not recognize them when they’re playing in malls and in grocery stores. I try to use the “U2 test” whenever someone tells me that they’ve never heard of a well-known artist. I can’t name a single U2 song or album (even though I have that one album sitting on my phone) and I wouldn’t recognize anyone from the band on the street except Bono and…looks up a group shot of the band with names in the caption…The Edge (never would’ve guessed that was his name). If someone asked me how I felt about U2 being picked for the 2035 halftime show then I would also say something similar to other folks in this thread: “I know they’re popular and widely recognized, but I don’t know their music.”
I recently realized that I have a pretty long history with Rihanna’s music. “Pon Di Replay” came out the summer I turned 21 and it felt like I heard that song every time we went out. Definitely a fun song to dance to, and it would probably be pretty good on a workout playlist, but it isn’t something that I listen to regularly.
I think Rihanna’s got a great mind for business and I enjoy some of her songs. I guess you could say I’m a casual fan even though I’ve never bought an album and I don’t really follow news about her. I checked through my music libraries and I found 2 of her songs that I’ve purchased and maybe two or three others where she was featured.
The halftime show was fine but I’ve always been fairly indifferent towards Super Bowl halftime shows. I enjoy the pageantry but I only barely pay attention most years. The show itself was solid but I would’ve enjoyed more spectacle. I don’t care about lip syncing unless the person is known for being an exceptional vocalist. A lot of Rihanna songs use layered vocals so it’s also not very surprising if you’re familiar with her work. I think it’s very different than someone like Alicia Keys, John Legend, or Adele coming out and lip syncing. The biggest surprise for me was the lack of guest acts.
Thanks for including this link! I think themed shows are more enjoyable for wider audiences. A few people have mentioned the halftime act being a indicator of current music but most acts on this list seem to be at least 5+ years removed from peak popularity. In a lot of cases it’s longer than that.
As I was reviewing the list I remembered some of the headliners but I would’ve struggled to generate even a passable list of halftime acts from memory. Conversely, I remember nearly all of the Super Bowl match ups and winners going back to XXIV.
As many have alluded, I felt it was little too much of a medley, I would just start to recognize/enjoy a song and it changed. I think it would have been better musically, if Rihanna had stuck to a few songs. Visually, I did not find it interesting except for maybe the first few moments, after that, it just seemed to blend together.
As to the special guest, could it simply be her unborn child? I do not know if she had announced it before the superbowl, but that could be the special guest she alluded to.
The one movie I remember her from is Ocean’s-8, which if you go by how the cast behaved on Graham Norton, it was a fun shoot for all involved.
//i\\
She was in Battleship, a much maligned movie They say it was based on the game Battleship but it wasn’t really. It was based on-- action movies. It wasn’t a good movie-- it was an action movie. I enjoyed it because I enjoy action movies. . She was fine in it. Don’t know if she can become as good an actor as Mary J. Damn, is Mary good in The Umbrella Acadamy.
As I said above, my SWAG about the costumes is that the bulkiness concealed safety harnesses for Rihanna and the dancers who performed on the raised platforms.
I haven’t been in a mall in more than 20 years. I thought they were mostly extinct.
They’re definitely not as culturally relevant as they were in the 80s and even 90s, but they’re still around, and some are still reasonably busy. I was at a JC Penney at a mall a couple weeks ago to pick up something for my wife and was surprised at how busy the mall was. I was gonna get something from the food court to nosh on, but all the lines were more than five deep, so I bailed. The JC Penney itself, though, was a bit of a ghost town to what I remember of it from back in the day. But the smaller shops seemed to be getting decent foot traffic. All the malls I grew up with in the 80s are still extant, if a bit quieter.