It’s a terrible injustice to wait until exactly 10am to log on to Ticketmaster and pay a large amount of money (which could pay for a lot of other things in your life, like wifi for months; many drinks; a train ticket to a cooler city than the one you live in) to see a pop star perform — and then the site crashes or you’re inputting your credit card information and you get kicked off and it slowly dawns on you that you will not be attending The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour even though Beyoncé has added extra performances at the Barclays center like you knew she would.
It might be more disastrous, however, to actually make it through that harrowing process and show up to the venue find out that oh wait, this is going to be the longest night of your life. Especially if you’re going to see someone like Rihanna who, over the course of the past couple of years, appears to have a growing disinterest in showing up even remotely on time (or, well, showing up at all). Herewith, an accounting of how Rihanna doesn’t give a shit about your silly concert tickets.
September 29, 2011, Belfast. Rihanna is 90 minutes late starting her show; “BELFAST sorry for being so late 2nt!BIG SHOW!FIRST NIGHT!Things dont always run smoothly or as planned,but I dearly appreciate ur patience” she later says on Twitter,.
November 14, 2011, London. Rihanna is 65 minutes late starting her show. When she does begin, she apparently shouts, “London, put your fucking hands together.” One attendee writes that he thought, “Rihanna, why don’t you fucking apologise.”
November 2012, 777 Tour. Journalists brought along on Rihanna’s airplane discover that they’ll be dealing with constant “unbelievably long delays that wasted time by the bucketload.”
November 19, 2012, London. Rihanna shows up an hour late to an appearance and performs only one song, but is paid hundreds of thousands. She reportedly has gathered thousands of dollars in fines for late flight departures.
March 10, 2013, Boston. Rihanna cancels her show because of laryngitis. She tweets, “#BOSTON this is the hardest thing for me to deal with! I feel like we’ve been waiting on this day forever, and I’m hurt that I let you down.”