At one point, Rihanna added a floor-length Alaia cape to her all-red outfit, which also included gloves and some diamond accessories—appropriate for the woman who invented what it means to “shine bright like a diamond.”
Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
“When I first got the call to do it again this year I was like, ‘Are you sure? I’m three months postpartum. Should I be making major decisions like this right now? I might regret this,’” Rihanna said during a Super Bowl halftime show press conference on February 9, per Variety. “When you become a mom there’s something that happens where you feel like you can take on the world and can do anything. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world. As scary as it was, because I haven’t been on stage in seven years, there’s something exhilarating about the challenge of it all. It’s important for me to do this year. It’s important for my son to see that.”
Rihanna also told reporters that she reworked the set list about 39 times before narrowing her performance down to 13 minutes. “I’m feeling open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new, things that are different, things that are off, weird,” she said about future albums. “Might not ever make sense to my fans…. I want to have fun with music.”
