Rihanna has fallen quickly out of my good graces over the course of a couple of years.
She peaked with Rated R, the dark and emotional follow-up to the hit-filled Good Girl Gone Bad. That album followed her assault by deranged lunatic Chris Brown and it was angry, defiant and featured her strongest material yet.
I’m a Rihanna fan, but even I am a little perplexed by the strong reviews for her latest album, Talk That Talk. I’ve seen several publications call it her best yet, which makes no sense to me.
Rihanna’s career peak came with the R&B/pop smash Good Girl Gone Bad, which I’ve likened to a modern-day Thriller, and its follow-up, Rated R, the dark, raw reaction to her encounter with domestic violence. Together, those albums cement Rihanna’s place in the upper echelon of modern pop stars.
I started Duet Week with two gentlemen of advanced age sharing the mic, but the rest of the week will feature pairings between men and women. And the first of those is this very steamy match-up between Rihanna and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine.
I recently read a Rolling Stone interview with Rihanna in which the writer gushed about how impossibly gorgeous she is in person — unlike many celebrities who turn out to be a product of PhotoShop and packaging, Rihanna’s presence is amplified in the flesh. Where do you sign up for that guy’s job?
Best Songs of 2010 – Honorable Mentions
Last year, Rihanna’s ‘Fire Bomb’ came in at #2 on my list of the year’s best songs. That track almost landed in the top spot before a late surge by Brad Paisley.
This year Rihanna didn’t release anything as powerful as that track and warrants just an honorable mention. Her new album, Loud, has none of the ambition or pathos of Rated R. It’s a naughty, mischievous party album — diverting but not very memorable.
Rihanna’s new album, Loud, has received a lot of positive reviews, and invariably each of them mentions that it’s a “return to form” or “welcome homecoming” as compared to last year’s very dark Rated R. This is a common pattern in music reviews that has always bugged me… the need to diminish an artist’s previous album in order to celebrate a new one.
Those same reviewers fell all over themselves last year praising Rated R as a gritty, emotional powerhouse of a pop album (Entertainment Weekly even named it the best album of 2009). But it’s always tempting to paint every success as rebound or redemption.
Meet Me In Montauk 