Rihanna says she’s changed her Super Bowl Halftime Show set 39 times

It’s been “difficult” to compress her 17-year career into a 13-minute performance, she said in a press conference Thursday.

February 10, 2023
Rihanna says she’s changed her Super Bowl Halftime Show set 39 times Valerie Macon / AFP / Getty Images

In an Apple Music press conference on Thursday (February 9), Rihanna said she’d changed her Super Bowl Halftime Show setlist 39 times before landing on the performance’s current version. The issue, she explained, has been deciding how to best represent her 17-year, blockbuster career in music in the space of 13 minutes, a process she described “as difficult.”

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“Some songs we have to lose because of that, and that’s going to be okay,” she said. “We did a pretty good job at narrowing it down. There’s probably been about 39 versions of the setlist right now. We’re on our 39th. Every little change counts.”

Later in the conference, she upheld her recent press strategy of teasing new music without actually revealing any concrete details. “I’m feeling open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new, things that are different, things that are off, weird,” she said. “Might not ever make sense to my fans… I want to have fun with music.”

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Listen to the full press conference below.

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Rihanna says she’s changed her Super Bowl Halftime Show set 39 times