21-02-2025
A billionaire pop star may be headlining Glastonbury – and it's not Taylor Swift
Is Rihanna heading to Worthy Farm? After years of speculation, the jigsaw pieces are falling into place for the Barbadian pop superstar to finally headline Glastonbury Festival, the world-famous music jamboree that takes place in Somerset over the last weekend of June. I hope she packs her, ahem, umbrella.
Word has reached The Telegraph that the 37-year-old singer is planning a residency of up to six concerts at London's former Olympic Stadium in early July. Rihanna's opening shows at the now-renamed London Stadium, home to West Ham football club, are tentatively set to take place on Friday 4 and Saturday 5 July with further possible shows earmarked for 8, 9, 11 and 12 July, according to a well-placed live music source.
A second senior concert industry source said that Rihanna's promoters are 'holding' London Stadium, meaning that the shows are at the advanced planning stage. An announcement could come as soon as next week.
The run of concerts – her first in almost a decade – would commence just five days after Glastonbury ends on June 29. It is, as Glasto-watchers' parlance goes, a whopping Glastonbury Shaped Hole – or GSH – in the singer's schedule. Forget Taylor Swift, another phenomenally successful and wealthy artist who's often been linked to a Glasto headline slot (Swift was due to perform in 2020 before the pandemic cancelled the festival). It looks like 2025 could be the year for a different pop behemoth to take the honours – Rihanna.
The rumours may prove to be just that, but the likely London shows are just too convenient. If she plays, she'll join Neil Young as a headliner after the Canadian veteran was confirmed in early January. Rod Stewart has also been confirmed in the festival's Sunday afternoon Legends slot.
The timing of the comeback works for another reason. Word of Rihanna's likely shows comes just days after her partner, rapper A$AP Rocky, was found not guilty in a Los Angeles felony assault trial of firing a gun at a former friend. He had faced up to 24 years in prison if convicted of all the charges. The couple have two sons together.
Rihanna's first tour since 2016's Anti World Tour would be a very big deal. Rock purists may grumble about a pop act headlining Glastonbury, should it happen. But Rihanna is one of the world's most successful recording artists, having sold an estimated 250 million records since she signed to Def Jam Recordings in the mid-Noughties. Her eclectic output takes in pop, R&B, dance music, hip hop, reggae and balladry and is bound together by one of modern music's most versatile and soulful voices. Rihanna's had 14 US number one singles – the most ever behind The Beatles, Mariah Carey and Elvis Presley.
Tracks like Umbrella, featuring rapper Jay-Z, Only Girl (In the World), Diamonds and We Found Love, her EDM banger with DJ Calvin Harris, were worldwide mega hits. She has also duetted with Eminem, Coldplay and Drake, which leaves plenty of scope for special guests at any Pyramid Stage appearance. Above all this, Rihanna's a style icon and an actor, appearing in Ocean's 8 in 2018 and providing the voice of Smurfette in this summer's forthcoming Smurfs movie.
She's also a wildly successful entrepreneur through her fashion, lingerie and cosmetics companies under the Fenty umbrella. In 2021, Forbes named Rihanna the wealthiest female musician in the world with a business empire estimated to be worth $1.7 billion, or £1.35 billion. (It took Swift until 2024 to become a billionaire, according to the same publication.)
Which brings us to another, tantalising aspect of Rihanna's London summer sojourn. Her shows would come a month after archrival Beyoncé plays six concerts at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, five miles to the north of West Ham's ground. It would be the mother of London music diva derbies, a clash of the pop titans to end all clashes. And, if Rihanna plays Glastonbury in addition to her six shows, she'd be one up on Beyoncé's six concerts at Spurs. Granted, Beyoncé has already headlined Glastonbury (in 2011) but Rihanna's tour would come with a definite sense of Beyoncé's limelight being challenged.
Rihanna and Beyoncé have long been friendly competitors. Both are entertainment polymaths with vast business empires to their names. And they're halves of music power couples: Rihanna with Rocky and Beyoncé with Jay-Z. Their lives have overlapped. Jay-Z has always been a mentor to Rihanna, first at Def Jam, which he ran, and then at his own label Roc Nation, to which Rihanna later moved. As well as on Umbrella, Rihanna and Beyoncé's husband duetted on his 2009 track Run This Town and her 2011 song Talk That Talk.
And what of Glastonbury? Securing Rihanna would be a coup. She doesn't need the money and she would bring an unforgettable show to the Vale of Avalon. As well as heritage acts like Paul McCartney and Elton John, the festival has opted for increasingly poppy headliners in recent years, with Dua Lipa, SZA and Billie Eilish topping the bill. Rumours that Rihanna was plotting a comeback tour and would possibly headline Glastonbury started circulating in 2023.
Towards the end of that year stories also appeared that a new album – her ninth – was in the works, her first since album since 2016's Anti. Some reports suggested that she'd signed a multi-year contract with promoter Live Nation, said to be worth £32 million, although at the time Billboard quoted a source saying that the figure was 'made up' and that no tour had been confirmed.
It is not known if Rihanna's London dates would form part of a larger world tour, although one source said these would be her only stadium shows anywhere in the world this year. Rihanna has an affinity with London, having lived in the capital between 2018 and 2020. She is thought to have rented a £32 million mansion in St John's Wood. It was only after fans spotted her carrying a Sainsbury's Bag for Life that she confirmed she had moved here. Meanwhile last year she was reportedly spotted at Red Bus recording studio in the capital, fuelling speculation that a comeback was on the cards.
Rihanna's opening London date of Friday July 4 would coincide with one of the biggest music weekends of the year. Oasis will kick off their highly-anticipated reunion tour on the same night in Cardiff, while Lana Del Rey plays Wembley Stadium. Meanwhile, a reformed Black Sabbath will headline the Back to the Beginning festival – dubbed 'the heavy metal Live Aid' – in Birmingham the next day. Also performing that weekend in London's Hyde Park are Sabrina Carpenter and Noah Kahan, and Fontaines D.C. and Stereophonics in Finsbury Park.
In recent years, Rihanna has largely stayed away from the limelight to bring up her young family. Not that having children has completely stopped her, though. When Rihanna performed at the Super Bowl half-time show in 2023 (a show arranged by Jay-Z's Roc Nation), she was pregnant with her second child with Rocky. She accidentally revealed her baby bump to 121 million people when the zip of her red jumpsuit failed to do up, she said after the show.
