EDIT: 3 new songs from Rated R reviewed HERE! Enjoy! 🙂
EDIT 2: the full Rated R album review HERE
Rihanna’s new song, “Russian Roulette”, premiered today and it has taken a lot of people by surprise. Namely, because the Ne-Yo produced track is a dark ballad. Now, a lot of people don’t like Rihanna when she sings songs like “Unfaithful” and “Take A Bow”. They tend to prefer her uptempo material, and with songs like “Umbrella”, “S.O.S.” and “Sell Me Candy”, who can argue with that? But “Take A Bow” was a fantastic, simple song with a touching lyric and nice piano chords, and this new track also delivers the goods.
Rihanna’s vocals have improved – she still sounds somewhat like a goat, but this is probably one of the best vocals she has turned in. I remember when she first came on the scene, and seeing her perform “Pon De Replay” live, I saw some vocal potential which had yet to be developed. That potential seemed to disappear during the campaigns for A Girl Like Me and Good Girl Gone Bad (a fantastic album, but one driven more by production and songwriting than the talents of the singer herself). In short, she often sounded like a goat bleating, and many many blogs and people I know have compared her to that animal. On “Russian Roulette”, there is less bleating and more vocal promise – the dark lyrics and strong melody allow Rihanna to stretch her vocal cords without ever sounding strained or out of her comfort zone.
Lyrically, the song is smart too. It never uses the words “russian roulette” (perhaps avoiding censorship from over-zealous radio stations, though references to “guns” and “triggers” are still present) but leaves the metaphor ambiguous – she could be talking about an actual game of Russian roulette, or she could be talking about a dangerous, damaging love. (Hello Chris Brown.) The tension between feelings of vulnerability and strength is explored as the theme of the song, and despite it being lyrically concise, words like “I’m terrified but I’m not leaving / Know that I must pass this test” convey that conflict effectively. The song ends ambiguously, with the bridge lyric being “It’s too late to pick up the value of my life” and a gunshot signalling the song’s climax. We don’t know whether that gunshot means that Rihanna has lost the game of Russian roulette, or whether she put the gun to her head only to survive and play another game. Either way, it is suggested that the singer is brave enough to play the game and confront her demons / love / whatever you think the song is about. It’s very open to interpretation.
I’ve read a lot of complaints about the song – it’s a ballad and Rihanna can’t sing them; we wanted another “Umbrella” or “Don’t Stop The Music”; we thought it would be catchier and an uptempo dance smash; it’s not edgy enough. I was pleasantly surprised by Rihanna’s choice to use a ballad for her lead single. I don’t think that it will be massively successful, simply because people’s idea of a smash hit record seems to be anything (particularly coming from RedOne or Ryan Tedder – *yawn*) with a 4/4 beat and vocals which repeat the same line / word / syllable over and over again (see: Lady GaGa, who has built a large part of her career on writing songs which go “mamamama papa-papa po-po-po-poker face po-po-po-po-po oh ohhhhohohoh oh oh ra ra ha ha ha ra ra ha ha ha ga ga” and then dancing around to them in silly, ‘avant-garde’ outfits).
“Russian Roulette” was not what I expected. Like everyone else, I expected an uptempo, faux-‘edgy’ stab at R&B-rock-pop with a dance edge and a repetitive, multi-hooked chorus. But I am pleased with what we got, which was a dark, brooding ballad showing long-overdue vocal promise and interesting lyricism to match the music and tense vocal delivery. After getting bored with Rihanna and her awful collaboration with Maroon 5 and that annoying “Disturbia” song (“bum bum be dum bum bum be dum bum” – why is singing stupid rhythms with non-existent words deemed the high end of songwriting these days? *smh*), this song has opened my ears again and I am once more interested in what she has to offer.
