Oh yeah, I'm blogging again. And this isn't a day-late April Fool's joke.
On the occasion of its third week atop the Billboard Hot 100, I wanted to return to the blogosphere and comment on yet another Rihanna number one hit. And the nature of my comments might surprise the people who know my long-standing position on the pop-tart.
I actually kind of dig it. Like, really kind of dig it.
See, when Rihanna first hit the scene with "Pon de Replay," she was an impossibly pretty looking kid with an ear toward the dancehall trend occupying pop radio. Her single was catchy and infectious enough, even if it was yet another song addressed to a, "Mr. DJ." I can't explain how much I don't like those words. Perhaps any readers who actually go to dance clubs on a regular basis can correct me on this, but many DJs want to be referred by "Mr..." their job. I can't imagine it would work in any other profession either. (Mr. Accountant? Miss Reporter? Dr. ... uh... Dermatologist?)
After that smash first single, Rihanna came back with "SOS," which committed two large fouls in my mind. First: it was NOT an ABBA cover. Second: it appropriated the immortal synth-pop classic, "Tainted Love," without adding anything new to the mix. I probably shouldn't expect much from pop singles, but it just irked me to know that an easily impressionable youngster was going to hear Soft Cell and think, "Wow, they're just ripping off Rihanna, right down to the, 'I toss and turn / I can't sleep at night' part." It felt like whoever was in charge of her music was deliberately stealing the past in lieu of finding a new sound for Rihanna to look impossibly pretty to... and doll out come-ons like, "Hold me close / cause I'm your tiny dancer." (?)
After that, the illogically terrible ballad "Unfaithful," set me off of Rihanna for years. She was just another puppet of pop without a single ounce of soul in her auto-tuned voice. Even her biggest hit, "Umbrella," could only rank as high as "not-bad," in my mind. At least the gimmick in that song was a vocal tic, rather than an obviously appropriated sample.
Then came the big sympathy moment, when Chris Brown did a supremely awful thing to his then-girlfriend. Because of this, Rihanna changed her image from the candy-coated exotic sex-pot, to this strange dominatrix-punk-sex-pot. She started pushing her songs to edgier places too. (Relatively speaking of course. She probably wouldn't cover a Suicide song in her lifetime.) And most critics went right along with it, praising her for seemingly taking her traumatic experience and channeling it into interesting pop. I wasn't exactly with them for the ride. "Russian Roulette," was again, simply "not bad," and not particularly memorable to me. "Stupid in Love," just drove the acknowledge-Chris-Brown point critics were searching for home too much.
But then there's "Rude Boy," a single which I will defend as Rihanna's best. Instead of an easily recognizable sample, Rihanna sings over an evocative synth line that could've been easily found on 808's and Heartbreaks. But moreover, what I love most about the song is her vocal performance. She finally got it exactly right. That voice I once called soulless had turned itself into a cool, detached, slightly damaged instrument. It makes the general, "fuck me, I dare you," lyrics sound all the more compelling. When the chorus comes, and Rihanna chants, "yeah," underneath a crescendo of "Take it, take it, love me, love me," she sounds completely in control in the coolest way.
Even better is the fact that she just lets the song do the talking. Give this song to any other pop star, including a younger Rihanna, and you'd get at least a few bars of American Idol/Mariah Carey-esque trilling and vocal acrobatics. There's none of that on this single, surprisingly, and it saddens me to think that no one at a major label will notice this. Rihanna gives the melodies exactly what they need and nothing more.
Sure, Rihanna can't entirely get away from easy appropriation. The video to her song is a blatant rip-off of "Boyz," by M.I.A. But I'd like to apply the same amount of spin to this as I do to Coldplay's blatant appropriation of Kraftwerk and Brian Eno; maybe, just maybe, there's a young music fan who will use this medium as jumping off point toward the more obscure musicians. Maybe Rihanna and M.I.A. could work off each other, giving one pop singer more artistic credibility, and one experimental-artist more popular exposure. Even if that's just an unlikely fantasy, it's nice that along with Lady Gaga, Rihanna's doing her part to make the pop charts a weirder, more rewarding place.
No comments:
Post a Comment