Music

One Line From Rihanna’s 2008 Ballad ‘Take A Bow’ Has Crystallised Into A Stunning Meme

It's quite the show, very entertaining.

by Jared Richards  21 October 2019
Rihanna's 'Take A Bow' is now a meme

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‘Take A Bow’ remains one of Rihanna’s highest-streamed songs, but a new meme has taken the ballad to a whole other level. The 2008 song might be about a break-up, but now one lyric has become a catch-all for pretending to be impressed — whether that be faking your enthusiasm for the latest prestige show or playing dead in front of your pet.

After all, there’s just something about the way Rihanna delivers the line, “That was quite a show/Very entertaining”. It’s filled with not just disdain, but apathy — the low-energy delivery and the laboured emphasis on each syllable of ‘en-ter-tain-ing’ makes the whole relationship sound so draining. The only thing to do is say your piece and move on, but even that proves exhausting.

And it turns out that distinct level of exasperation isn’t limited to a dissolved relationship. It also works pretty well for, say, being pressured into watching HBO’s new hit, Succession: at least, that’s how Twitter user @g0ld3nretriever repurposed it.

After that, people took the video in their own directions, both using it to give sincere props to overlooked or forgotten gems (The Mole, Desperate Housewives) and impatiently wait out new seasons of Euphoria. 

It also helps shine a light on important cultural moments, such as the Beyoncé/Jay-Z/Solange elevator fight of 2014.

Alternatively, it’s the perfect placeholder for pretending you enjoyed your friend’s improv show, or reacting to a tantrum.

Of course, it gets sexual too.

This meme? Quite a show. Very entertaining. Once it caught on, @g0ld3nretriever continued to mine the song for another meme. It isn’t quite as versatile, but we love it just as much.

Scroll through more here while you pre-order your Fenty Lingerie and Groceries and wait for new Rihanna music, which she has promised is coming this year.