Now even Rihanna’s shit songs are good
I used to have a theory about Rihanna – some of her songs were shit and some of them were good. That’s not really a theory, more just
a fact. Not really a fact, just an opinion based on facts.
But either way it seems like she’s finally broken this habit of inconsistency with a run of brilliant singles, well two in a row. Only Girl (In The World) was good, right? And though Drake tries his best to take a shit on What’s My Name?, the quality of Rihanna’s vocals carry it over that obstacle. Even Pitbull couldn’t derail such a great song.
‘S&M’ is her subtle new single and despite being filled with embarrassingly clumsy references to whips and chains it’s really, really good. Either this means that Rihanna really has broken the habit of a lifetime or that she’s due a really, really shit song soon. I don’t know which I prefer. Probably the latter, being the gloating, schadenfraude-filled bastard that I am.
The pre-chorus is a thing of real poetic beauty. Rihanna concedes that she ‘may be bad but I’m perfectly good at it’, an awful lesson to impressionable youths everywhere – you shouldn’t be proud of underachieving. She also makes a comment about ‘sex in the air, I don’t care I love the smell of it’, which sounds like a serious problem with an air-conditioning system. There’s also some handy advice for anyone looking to bully her: ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me’, so you know now what the most effective methods are for both. Gratuitously obvious lyrics do have some purpose.
