Rihanna continues to insist that she's not retired, and it appears that she's not lying. But the first new Rihanna music in years will probably take a form that her fans presumably did not expect or, let's be honest here, want. In 2023, Rihanna signed on to play the voice of Smurfette in the voice of a new Smurfs movie called Smurfs. (It doesn't have anything to do with the last two Smurfs movies, in which Rihanna's onetime peer Katy Perry had the Smurfette role.) Today, Rihanna herself introduces the trailer for Smurfs. The good news is that it promises "new music from Rihanna." The bad news is... everything else.
Smurfs appears to be right in line with a Rihanna film career that also includes gems like Battleship and Ocean's 8. This one is going for a kind of Barbie thing, with the animated Smurfs being transported into the live-action real world. John Goodman plays the voice of Papa Smurf, and the cast also includes credible comedy types like Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Sedaris, and Nick Kroll. I did not laugh at anything in the trailer, though. I was deep in the scowl zone for the entire time. (James Corden warning: James Corden is apparently in this film.)
As for the music, the trailer starts off with a mash-up of the old Smurfs theme and Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music." From there, it transitions into what sounds like an extremely generic dance version of Belinda Carlisle's 1987 pop classic "Heaven Is A Place On Earth." At one point, we hear DJ Khaled yelling over it. This is apparently the song "Higher Love" by Desi Trill with DJ Khaled, Cardi B, Natania, and Subhi. All of this looks and sounds like ass, but that's just my opinion. Judge it for yourself in the trailer below.
According to Variety, Rihanna wrote original songs for the movie. She's also one of its producers. I hope her new songs are generally better than what we're hearing here. This will probably be her first new music since she dropped "Lift Me Up" and "Born Again" on the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack in 2022. I didn't expect to long for the days of "Lift Me Up," but here we are. Smurfs is in theaters 7/18.
