Rihanna new music alert: Singer to release first new song in three years for the ‘Smurfs’ movie
Rihanna at the Rihanna x Fenty Hair Los Angeles Launch Party in Los Angeles in 2024.
By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN
(CNN) — Rihanna may not have her ninth studio album ready to release quite yet, but she does have a new song coming out soon to tide everyone over.
The track, titled “Friend of Mine,” was featured on Wednesday for the first time in the new trailer for the “Smurfs” movie, in which Rihanna voices the role of Smurfette.
In the trailer, Rihanna is seen in the studio during the recording of the song, laughing and smiling while adjusting her headphones.
The full track will be released on Friday.
“Friend of Mine” is the first new song Rihanna has released since 2022, when she released “Lift Me Up,” the Oscar-nominated song featured in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
The “Smurfs” movie follows Smurfette, who “leads the Smurfs on a mission into the real world to save” Papa Smurf (John Goodman) after he was “mysteriously taken by evil wizards,” according to an official synopsis.
In addition to Rihanna and Goodman, the “Smurfs” movie will feature a voice cast including James Corden, Nick Offerman, Dan Levy, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Octavia Spencer, Hanna Waddingham and Kurt Russell, among others.
Supporters of the “Umbrella” singer have long waited for Rihanna – who is expecting her third child with partner A$AP Rocky – to release her hotly anticipated ninth studio album, which would mark her first full album since 2016’s “Anti.”
In February, Rihanna said she’s closer than ever to completing the task in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, claiming at the time that she “just cracked the code on what I really want to do for my next body of work. I am actually feeling really good about this.”
Rihanna stopped short of providing a timeframe for when the album may actually come out, but did say her new music “feels right.”
“It feels like it digs right into where I need to be, and I want this,” she said. “This body needs to come out, and I’m ready to go there.”
The “Smurfs” movie will be released in theaters on July 18.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Dan Heching contributed to this report.
