UBIQUITY!
[Video][Website]
[5.33]
Brad Shoup: I feel strange being super into three straight Rihanna singles. It’s a certainty that pop historians will find as much affection for the songwriting-camp model as they do for the Brill Building or the M.G.s model. In Ri-Ri’s case, it’s produced a spate of lean, sprightly singles. The timecrunch (especially with such a serial releaser as Rihanna) tends to show in the lyrics, but here, as in “We Found Love,” the repeated inanities-on-paper become pop mantras. She sings them like it’s a true pleasure. Also like “We Found Love,” this is an unabashed ode to contentment, with the de rigeur raunch becoming less titillation than triumph. It’s light-stepping electro-reggae, with Dr. Luke’s downstrokes approximating David Guetta’s piano bludgeons on “I Gotta Feeling”. Even the dubstep drops sound like deep sighs. It’s 2011’s “I Walk the Line,” and it’s confirmed my fandom.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Let’s not kid ourselves: this is just a placeholder before “Where Have You Been.” I’ll resume caring then.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: It’ll be buried on Zipfile 2 of her Complete Greatest Hits. Mom and dad will smile at each other over it. The kids will wrinkle their noses, and go back to “Umbrella” (the girls) and “S&M” (the boys).
[5]
Alfred Soto: Each stutter brings me closer to an empyrean of pure odium that no other Rihanna single has matched, which is some achievement: it’s been so easy to ignore her. Now, trying to outshout Beyonce on a song of determined melodic fallowness, she gives the lie to the suspicion that the only thing worse than bad is boring.
[3]
Zach Lyon: When you’re apparently hellbent on never going a week without a song in the Top 20, I guess you learn to space your filler singles out so they’re not all stuck at the end of the album cycle. Work it.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: This is probably a [10] if you mash it up with some early Police single. It’s pretty decent to begin with too. Hitting the right spot between delirious love and comfort, Rihanna’s delivery exudes pleasure and confidence. The middle eight is a bit weak, like dubstep heard through a shower glass but the rest is a generous but efficient 200 seconds of sun.
[7]