Rihanna performs “Diamonds” and “Stay” on Saturday Night Live

The last time Rihanna was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live, Ronald Reagon was still President and Debbie Gibson was launching her signature fragrance, Electric Youth. Lulz, just kidding. It was earlier this year when she was performing “Where Have You Been” from her Talk That Talk album. RiRi’s now back again, this time to perform her latest single “Diamonds” from her upcoming 147th studio album, Unapologetic.

People like to drag poor RiRi for her vocal abilities, but I find her to be a rather good singer when given the right song. She sounded pretty kickass when I saw her in concert for her Rated R (or was it Loud?) tour in Australia, and she sounds good on tonight’s episode of SNL. Sia’s deep and throaty voice obviously suits Rihanna’s, which is probably why the Bajan babe didn’t stray from the guide track when originally recording the song.

The rest of the performance featured a green screen blasting cheap special effects that made RiRi’s rendition look like one of Beyonce’s $2 I Am Sasha Fierce music videos. A bit of a hot ass mess, but it beats staring at a brick wall and ‘the band’, so it worked.

Following “Diamonds”, RiRi busted out a new track called “Stay”. The piano led ballad was a total snoozer and didn’t entice me one bit into possibly purchasing Unapologetic, but once again, the outspoken songstress totally nailed the vocals.

Check it out below.


This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2012 at 12:14 am and is filed under Performances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • ldfhjdfs

    The greens screen images were flawless. That style of imagery is very in right now. Have you ever been on tumblr???. No one else with her size platform is doing it. So hip and seapunk of her. But I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about that kinda stuff proph so to you it just reads as cheap.

  • muaziqjunkie

    At the beginning of the Diamonds performance I honestly couldn’t stop laughing… I didn’t know if it was supposed to be a joke or not but then they did start to grow on me a bit especially since it was a slow song anyway…

  • YAAAS HONEY!!!

    when I saw the greenscreen I immediately knew all those dickbags on tumblr were gonna cum in their panties… that alone makes it an automatic fail for me.

  • BozzPop

    She was great! And from what I heard so far I’m already in love with unapologetic!!! I just don’t know how I’m gonna digest so much music in one month: xtina, riri, 1D, neyo, alicia, pitbull, nicki, lana, … :) )

  • http://davidsask.wordpress.com/ DavidSask

    What was with the stoner psychedelia background on her performance of diamonds huge WTF?

  • Luke

    Stay was the only preview from the new album I liked, and I’m not disappointed. I think its beautiful.

  • Oliver

    Well that was unexpectedly amazing. Where the hell has that voice been for the last few years? Seriously though, her vocals in Stay were undeniable and even Diamonds was pretty damn near perfect. I honestly thought that she had pretty much shot her voice with the crazy lifestyle she leads at the moment but this totally proved me wrong. Colour me seriously impressed, this makes me a whole lot more curious about her new album.

  • XF

    Any of you want to be stunned with how good she can sound just YouTube “Rihanna Umbrella Live Paris Coldplay”

  • theprophetblog

    Nobody gives a fuck about tumblr except ADD teens with low attention spans

  • Bobs

    She sounds DAMN good. This may be a rushed era but we are getting Rated R part 2 here and I’m down with it. The snippets really impressed me. Stay is a gorgeous song and as added nice flourishes. A+ from someone who was down on her after TTT.

  • Guest

    Aka Rihanna’s fan base.

  • Blah

    i actually loved the psychedelic thingy with the green screen

  • http://www.twitter.com/themusicprophet The Music Prophet

    I didn’t hate this… Good for her :)
    Her vocals weren’t too shabby, and this song is growing on me :)

  • hollyq

    that was a pre recorded studio live 2 track she was lip singing like most artist who dont want to bomb on tv

  • Pingback: Rihanna homenajea a Valerio Lazarov con 'Diamonds' y 'Stay' en directo The Music Magazine

  • http://twitter.com/Charmilio20 Emilio

    she sounded Misteriosamente Amazing!,

    Wondering if she did

    Lip sync

  • http://www.facebook.com/aldokocha Aldo Kocha

    Learn How to Play Stay by Rihanna on Piano with the only Interactive Piano Tutorial online,- http://www.pianocrumbs.com/piano/tutorials/419/Stay-by-Rihanna

  • RMM

    She also performed Diamonds and turned on the Xmas Lights in Westfields Shopping Centre in London for £500k! It was great :) Check it out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJgGCfP7n0c#

  • Faithz