Pop Star, Rihanna, has just announced her return to music and fans are getting excited.
Fans have been long awaiting her return to music, but just as fans were beginning to lose hope, she was announced as the headliner for the 2023 Super Bowl halftime performance. On October 26th the singer tweeted “lift me up, 10.28.22” along with a 14 second video. The tweet was to promote her newest song Lift Me Up that appears in the Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever.
The song itself doesn’t feel too different from her last album. It’s clear that the song capitalizes off her name and soulful voice. Compared to the powerful lyrics of her last releases off ANTI, the song seems to lack a deeper meaning. The song’s lyrics (“Lift me up / Hold me down / Keep me safe / Safe and sound”) fail to ignite the same emotion as her past releases.
ANTI was powerful because she sang about her real emotions: the fear of falling in love, along with the wish to completely trust someone again. Her latest single, although emotional on the surface, fails to transport the audience and allow them to feel her emotions.
Rhianna has been releasing music since 2005, starting with her debut single “Pon de Replay.” The song peaked in the top five in fifteen countries and landed the number two spot on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The following year, “SOS” off her second album A Girl Like Me was her first song to reach the number one spot, and stayed there for three consecutive weeks. Since her debut she has had a total of fourteen number one hits and thiry-one songs to reach the top ten.
Despite the level of success her career has provided her, in 2016 she went on a six-year hiatus from music following the release of ANTI. Although she hasn’t released music since then, she has accomplished a lot during this time. In 2017, she launched her cosmetics line Fenty Beauty, and just last year she received a National Hero award in her home country of Barbados.
Her next album will still be highly anticipated by fans and hopefully her songs have a more personal connection to the singer.