Rihanna celebrated her twenty-second birthday at the beginning of this year and was still performing to support her fourth album Rated R at that time. Having reached such heights and having recorded an album which is dramatically different from all the previous material, which made many listeners consider Rated R her strongest effort, the singer would have seemed logic to take a good time out and have a year or two of rest. Nothing of the kind. It was actually clear from Rihanna’s very first album that this girl was going to go far and the time has shown how laborious and active this creative personality is, experimenting bravely but always remaining herself. It was known already in summer that the singer was preparing her 5th album to be released which has seen the light of the day this November. The record Loud is neither her returning to the initial light pop music nor the replaying of the tough and heavy fourth work, it is something in between – quite a varied dance collection with a couple of deeply thought numbers, naturally, offering several ready club hits at once.
The album Loud is the reflection of Rihanna’s very essence. She loves to dance, flirt, be a gentle fragile and a bold, vigorous fatal woman – but always noticeable, or loud as the album os called. It opens with the loudest song in the collection S&M which drops the flow of positive mood, fun and dancing on you at once. The second single What's My Name? featuring Drake is a bit reminiscent of Rihanna’s earlier compositions and pleases with a great dance sample, a memorable tune and unsophisticated lyrics. Avril Lavigne’s song I'm With You is partially used on Cheers (Drink To That) as well as oriental motifs, it also conquers with Rihanna’s low voice and a successful combination of beat and melody, and one can enjoy her falsetto on a mid-tempo composition Fading. Yet the catchiest, the most colorful and stylish is the lead single Only Girl (In The World) – it contains all the essential features of a dance super hit: the contrast of verse and chorus, a faultless arrangement, a contagious beat and lyrics easy to memorize from the very first listening. A very beautiful R&B ballad California King Bed follows to offer some happy love memories – the singer demonstrates her vulnerability here which is more characteristic of her early works but a track of this kind is necessary to complete the picture in the record’s context. The stylistics presented on Man Down is also an inseparable part of Rihanna’s creative work – it is a combination of reggae, dance hall, a contrast of falsetto and rough singing which refines more than one of artist’s hits. Raining Men, the duet with the female singer Nicki Minaj is the most joyful and playful, and dance composition Complicated tells about difficulties in the relationship which nobody can avoid. The album closes with the second part of the Eminem-featured hit Love The Way You Lie (Part II), which plays the role of a cherry on top of a cake – a nice addition to a great new material collection.
Rihanna’s originality is reflected on Loud no less than on Rated R, it is just that the latter had her dark side prevailing and the new album mostly offers the images and moods that the audience has been valuing about her from the very beginning. Rihanna’s goal was to make an album without fillers for she wanted people to listen to her music from beginning to end without turning to other ways to entertain such as alcohol whenever a song out of the album’s level is playing. It goes without saying she has achieved the goal also becaue such renowned authors and producers as Taio Cruz, Sean Garrett, Ne-Yo, Timbaland, David Guetta and others have helped her. Changing her hairdo for the third time – she is now wearing gorgeous fire-red curls after straight long and then short hair – Rihanna remains a bright individuality setting her own style and sexuality standards. Musically Loud raises the bar even higher and makes one doubt not even for a second that this singer knows how to create immortal hits staying on top of charts for weeks and weeks.
Talk That Talk
Rated R
Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded
Good Girl Gone Bad
A Girl Like Me
Music Of The Sun
Ode To J. Smith 2008
Travis' sixth album called Ode To J. Smith has been recorded in just a fortnight late last winter which has become a kind of a record for the Scottish four and the term has proved quite enough to create a sappy and crude sound
