Rihanna is the star act performing at the Super Bowl Halftime Show on 12th February – one of the rare occasions today where music gets a primetime slot and an equally rare occasion where anyone outside of the US displays any interest in any of its sports.
Basically, the Halftime Show is a major platform for an act to: a) push whatever their new single is; and b) really vivify their catalogue. It’s like America’s version of Glastonbury’s Legends Slot (but bookended with incomprehensible sport).
This year, Apple Music is really throwing its weight behind the show and Rihanna’s involvement in it (gingerly sidestepping her long-standing stake in Tidal). That’s because Apple Music has replaced Pepsi as the headline sponsor of the Halftime Show and is clearly looking to squeeze the most out of its association.
Hence the Rihanna’s Road To Halftime marketing push, which is inevitably centred around getting users to play her music in Dolby Atmos. There is also a tie-in with the new Apple Music Sing, a karaoke-style feature (although Apple pointedly does not use the ‘k’ word in any of its marketing around it) that launched at the end of 2022.
The pan-platform approach extends to Apple Music Radio creating Rihanna Revisited Radio, which Billboard describes as “an eight-episode roundtable exploring the cultural impact of her music”. There are also 32 playlists from each of the teams in the NFL outlining what they, apparently, listen to in the locker room and the gym as they prepare for games. There is also a huge Rihanna-centric takeover of Apple Music, aggregating all the different playlists.
It’s not all about Rihanna, however. There is Halftime Hype Radio (a 10-part series on past Halftime Show performances) and Live From Super Bowl LVII, a run of daily shows building up to the final and co-hosted by Zane Lowe.
Apple famously launched the Macintosh in a Ridley Scott-directed epic advertisement that got its only national airing in the ad break in the 1984 Super Bowl final. Let’s hope Rihanna runs off stage after throwing a hammer, or even an umbrella, through a giant screen featuring the looming face of Big Brother.
