Rihanna, Mariah's Over the Top Tour Requests
What Rihanna wants on tour plus more outrageous celebrity contract demands.
June 22, 2010 — -- $200 bottles of wine, candles opulent by the standards of Elizabethan England and flowers, flowers, everywhere.
A luxury hotel suite? A top of the line spa? No, these sorts of accoutrements are de rigueur for the dressing rooms of the music industry's most well known divas and stars.
As Rihanna readies for next month's "Last Girl on Earth" world tour she's making sure the prepping area of every concert venue feels like home -- which is, apparently, a leopard-print haven littered with Archipelago Black Forest candles that cost $29 a pop.
According to the pop star's tour rider, obtained by the Smoking Gun, Rihanna's tastes are pretty particular. The gramatically questionable document details a litany of requests made by her tour promoter, including:
The rider also gives specific instructions for the overall presentation of Rihanna's dressing room:
"The lighting in this room should be adequate for a relaxed atmosphere i.e. table and floor lamps rather than overhead fluorescent. This room should be carpeted and the walls draped to cover lockers and/or bricks. This drape needs to be white or cover the pipe & drape with a white chiffon cloth. Please replace any broken or cracked fittings -- door locks, taps etc."
The document ends with an all-caps, bold, underlined, weirdly-phrased declaration about Rihanna's sanitary standards:
"BATHROOMS MUST BE SPOTLESS. PLEASE DEEP CLEAN TOILET & SHOWER ONE"
Of course, Rihanna's not alone in exhibiting exacting standards while on the road. The quirks of dozens of artists have been revealed through their tour riders.
"In their 1982 rider, Van Halen infamously wanted a bowl of M&Ms -- with all the brown ones picked out," said Andrew Goldberg, managing editor of the Smoking Gun, which showcases hundreds of crazy celebrity riders.
"Clearly, it was a test," he said. "If you put in something really odd -- like no brown M&Ms -- and they catch it, it means the promoters are paying attention. If they miss that, what other, more important points are they missing? Lighting, security, microphones, amps? For musicians, that's a big deal. If you don't pay attention to the little things, you may be missing the bigger things."
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