Country matters!

Whilst the leader of the Labour Party has been pontificating on society’s lack of moral fibre at his Party conference in Liverpool this week, a very different kind of party has been taking place in a muddy barley field near Bangor in Co Down! Pop singer Rihanna has been peeling off her clothes, while filming a music video on a farmer’s land, and he has told her to cover up! Good for him. Someone not afraid to speak his mind, whether rightly or wrongly. Put your tits away, love, ’cos we don’t want to see them in these here parts! It seems to me like a case of Rihanna Ft The Wurzels but is apparently a collaboration between her and DJ Calvin Harris. Who he? The shoot was being staged close to a busy dual carriageway when the ‘star’ stripped to a red bikini after removing a long checked dress. Some reports suggest that the bikini top came off too, not that I’ve read all of them! Imagine how many red-blooded, heterosexual, male drivers are going to be distracted by the sight of a young woman’s knockers, famous or not. Bloody motoring hazard if you ask me!

Alan Graham, the 61-year-old farmer in question, pulled up in his tractor and told floozy Rihanna he found her behaviour inappropriate. Let’s be honest, it takes a pretty self-confidant young woman to cavort, half naked, down amongst the cowpats! She is clearly a bit of an exhibitionist. Her lack of inhibitions is just the latest example of an attitude that has existed, amongst a certain type of person, since time immemorial. The girl is really a prostitute and the ‘music’ merely coincidental. It’s not hardcore sex but the record industry has been chipping away at standards as long as I can remember. No political party is going to do anything about it as long as the revenues keep pouring in. Jessie J has told us, “It’s not about the money” and yet that is precisely all it is about. Pop has far more to do with what is fashionable, of the moment, than having a true desire to contribute to genuine musical culture. The performers claim they are ‘artists’, an expression more pretentious than anything you will find in the world of what is unfortunately named ‘classical’ music.

The sight of Rihanna’s bare breasts became too much for Graham’s Christian beliefs so he politely asked filming to stop. Blimey! First politics, now religion, what is my fluffy Journal coming to?! Anyway, credit where credit is due, the scarlet woman understood where the farmer was coming from and the production ground to a halt. I don’t suppose she gives a toss? The crew will simply relocate and shoot the cleavage - sorry footage - elsewhere. These people have so much money coming out their collective ear holes, it doesn’t matter to them. Alan claimed he’d never heard of Rihanna despite having four children of his own. She’s as big as it gets as far as pop stars are concerned… only Beyonce has a fatter arse! Clearly, he wasn’t interested in dancing under her umbrella! But the incident ended well. The farmer and the cowhand should be friends. He didn’t put her over bended knee and spank her bare bottom. They parted company on good terms. I have a back garden which, while undoubtedly not as big as Mr Graham’s acres, I’m only too happy to rent out!

Bottom of the Tops!

As I used to work in the record industry, I’m occasionally interested to see how certain records perform sales wise, regardless of musical merit. It’s a curious fact, of the employed system for measuring a disc’s success, that while “Umbrella” by Rihanna topped the charts for ten weeks, back in the summer of last year, the song was pipped to the post of best-selling single of 2007, at the eleventh hour, by Leona Lewis’s bleeding awful “Bleeding Love”, which only held pole position for a mere seven! In that shorter amount of time, the latter managed to outsell the former quite considerably. In fact, it did so very early on, upon consideration of the week-by-week sales figures. If “Single of the Year” was down to number of weeks as “Top of the Pops”, or even number of weeks on the chart, then Rihanna’s song would’ve won hands down as it has certainly been the more consistent of the pair, regardless of the fact that it was released earlier. It’s still been a golden shower for Rihanna!

Singin’ in the Rain!

Rihanna established herself, big-time, in the summer of 2005 with her debut smash hit, “Pon de Replay” and has continued to demonstrate her smash hit potential in subsequent years (e.g. “S.O.S.”, 2006; “Umbrella”, 2007). By the time of her third album, “Good Girl Gone Bad” (2007), she was a full-fledged international pop star with a regular presence atop the charts, from Germany to Japan.

Born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988, in Saint Michael, Barbados, she always exhibited a special quality, winning beauty and talent contests as a schoolchild. But because she lived on the fairly remote island of Barbados in the West Indies, she never foresaw the sort of stardom that would later befall her. That stardom came courtesy of a fateful meeting with a man named Evan Rogers. The New Yorker was vacationing in Barbados with his wife, a native of the island, when someone turned him on to Rihanna. Since Rogers had spent years producing pop artists -- including superstars like *NSYNC, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Kelly Clarkson, Laura Pausini, and Rod Stewart -- he offered her the opportunity to record some music after he recognized her talent and potential. Along with Rogers’ production partner, Carl Sturken (the other half of Syndicated Rhythm Productions), Rihanna recorded some demos that sparked the interest of the Carter Administration -- that is, newly appointed Def Jam president Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. This led to an audition and, in turn, an on-the-spot offer to sign with Def Jam, which Rihanna indeed inked on the spot. Come the summer of 2005, Def Jam rolled out “Pon de Replay”, the lead single of “Music of the Sun”, which was produced almost entirely by Rogers and Sturken and which synthesized Caribbean rhythms and beats with urban-pop song writing.

“Pon de Replay” caught fire almost immediately, climbing all the way to number two on The Billboard Hot 100 and contesting the half-summer reign of Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” atop the chart, and this was before “Music of the Sun” even had been released. The album spawned one other hit, “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want”, which broke the Top 40. Rihanna’s follow-up album, “A Girl Like Me”, was a greater success, spawning three big hits: a chart-topper (“S.O.S.”) and two Top Tens (“Unfaithful”, “Break It Off”). Rihanna’s third album, “Good Girl Gone Bad” (2007), continued her success and, more notably, signalled a change of direction. Whereas her past two albums had been imbalanced -- often weighed down by faceless balladry and canned Caribbean-isms -- “Good Girl Gone Bad” was a first-rate dance-pop album. Moreover, it was surprisingly solid, stacked with potential singles and easily enjoyable from beginning to end. Collaborators included Jay-Z, Ne-Yo, Timbaland, and StarGate. The lead single, “Umbrella”, shot to number one and, for the third year in a row, was a potential “song of the summer”. By this point it was clear that Rihanna had become one of the biggest singles artists of the mid-2000s.

Source: Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide

Good Girl Goes Gold!

Rihanna’s rise to the top of the popular music industry has been rapid, to say the least. She’s been in the public eye for roughly the same amount of time as “Doctor Who” has been back on air in the UK. She’s been very productive, too, for a pop artist, producing an album a year over the last three years. In 2005, Robyn Rihanna Fenty, to give her her full name, released her debut CD, “Music of the Sun”, the songs on which reflect her native Barbados. This record spawned the first two of - currently - a total of ten singles, “Pon de Replay” and “If it’s Lovin’ that You Want”. These two tracks would reappear, in new versions, on the end of her second album, “A Girl Like Me” (2006), presumably to help sales! A further four singles were lifted from this release; “SOS”, which samples Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”; the beautifully-understated “Unfaithful”, written by R‘n’B singer Ne-Yo and with whom she would later collaborate on her third full-length release; the less successful “We Ride”; and “Break it Off”, featuring Sean Paul, meaning this disc actually contains a total of six singles and thus borders, already at such an early stage in her career, on a greatest hits package!!

One year later and Rihanna’s ascension is complete! I would go so far as to say Miss Fenty is now bigger than either Britney or Kylie. They’ll be battling it out next month for chart domination but I can’t see either beating the phenomenal success of Rihanna’s lead single, “Umbrella”, from her third album “Good Girl Gone Bad” (2007). Again, this release contains four singles. They are the aforementioned ultra-successful “Umbrella” featuring Jay-Z, which opens the album; “Shut Up and Drive”, the fifth track on the CD; the funkier “Don’t Stop the Music”, which is the disc’s third song; and, finally, sixth track “Hate That I Love You”, a duet with Ne-Yo, is a ballad accompanied by a clever little video with a twist in its tale. This type of R‘n’B isn’t usually my thing but, on this occasion, Rihanna’s third album seems to be infused with a rock sensibility which makes it more agreeable to my ear! I’ve posted the promos that accompany these four tracks in a “Rihanna Special” on my Jukebox, currently at the bottom of the front page, together with a slightly distorted performance of second single “Shut Up and Drive”, from the “Late Show with David Letterman”, directly above it. Hope you enjoy listening to some of the songs from what will probably end up being voted album of the year!!