Catriona Stewart's verdict: four stars
YOU have to wonder what their mothers think of these crotch-grabbing, liberated, commanding young women.
Rihanna, dressed like a golden, gansta tiger, is 20 minutes late on stage - practically early by her standards - and grinding and winding like her bones are entirely marrow.
She is surprisingly beautiful, this 25-year-old, with the fine featured face of a 40s film star and the ability to turn it from coquettish to lascivious in turns.
She opens with an attitude laden Phresh Out the Runway before Birthday Cake. She is a girl you would want on your side in a fight.
You Da One melts her hard edges before Man Down, a song that never fails to be tainted with the knowledge of her real life relationship travails; the song details her shooting a man who hurts her.
The fun truly begins with Rude Boy and What's My Name. Laden with suggestion and ever flirtatious, she invites us to ride her pony and go downtown.
Although the sun abandoned Balado hours before and the night air is thin and icy, Rihanna brings heat to the huge crowd gathered before her.
She writhes through a greatest hits list - until it comes to a perfunctory Umbrella, a song she injects with barely any energy, as though she can't wait for it to be over.
It ends, she whispers a quiet "thank you" and normal business quickly resumes with All Of the Lights.
Then the limber backing dancers leave her alone on stage and Rihanna prepares for What Now?
"We all know love can be complicated," she prefaces the song. Take A Bow, next up, is even more painful and, at the line "You look so ugly when you cry" the singer wells up, or affects to.
Who knows what is sentiment and what stagecraft, but it's a nice little nuance in an otherwise bombastic set.
Diamonds, Only Girl, Don't Stop the Music and Where Have You Been bring her fully to life.
The stage darkens and it seems the show is over but then back she comes for a lovely rendition of Stay before Diamonds again.
As she turns to walk off the stage, fireworks explode over the arena and it's hard to know which way to look.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article