Rihanna has delivered pop hit after pop hit since bursting onto the music scene in the mid-2000s. The album’s lead single, “Work,” featuring rapper Drake, spent nine weeks at No. 1 and earned two Grammy nominations. In January 2016, Rihanna released her eighth album, Anti, allowing Jay-Z’s online streaming site Tidal to exclusively feature the collection of tracks for a week. The album included “We Found Love,” a track with DJ Calvin Harris that won the 2013 Grammy Award for best short-form music video. Less than a year later, when Rihanna was only 16 years old, she left Barbados to move in with Rogers and his wife in Connecticut and work on recording a demo album.
An interpolation of Toots and the Maytals’ 1966 song of the same name, Sister Nancy’s in-studio freestyle was laid over sparse rub-a-dub production, allowing her declaration of ambition and skill to ring loud and clear. In addition to her status as a rare female voice in a sea of male performers at the dawn of dancehall, Sister Nancy is recognized for her influential, highly sampled single “Bam Bam.” While Sister Nancy needn’t be reminded of her influence — “I’m the woman who created dancehall … on the mic system, around the sound system. I’m the one who did all of that, first” — the past 15 years have seen the artist receive her flowers on a global stage. “I will never be your ordinary thing. When you come to see me, it doesn’t matter the time or the space, it’s always going to be good.” “People love what I stand for. I always give the audience something they can think about,” Sister Nancy tells GRAMMY.com, Zooming in from a car in Midtown Manhattan.
The Rihanna Essentials: 15 Singles To Know
- True to her Carribean heritage, Rihanna’s dancehall-inspired debut single “Pon de Replay” earned the then 17-year-old Barbados native her first entry on the Hot 100 at an impressive No. 2.
- In contrast to the fairytale motifs and happy endings of Fearless, evermore saw Swift become fixated on “unhappy” endings — stories of failed marriages (“happiness”), lifeless relationships (“tolerate it”), and one-time flings (“’tis the damn season”).
- She told Winfrey that Brown may have been the love of her life and she has developed “a very close friendship” with him.
- In turn, Swift hasn’t just become one of the biggest artists of all time — she’s changed pop music altogether.
- The singer/songwriter also picked up a Best Traditional Pop GRAMMY in 2024 for her second LP, an immaculate collection of jazz, pop and classical that bridged the gap between Gen-Z and the Great American Songbook.
Rolling Stone included her single “Umbrella” in its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” and her album Anti amongst the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. She is the UK’s third best-selling female artist of the 21st century, having sold seven million albums. In August 2018, Billboard ranked Rihanna as the tenth-most successful Hot 100 artist of all time and it also named her the top Hot 100 artist of the 2010s. She has accumulated numerous awards and honours, including nine Grammy Awards, twelve Billboard Music Awards, and thirteen American Music Awards.
Rihanna debuts new baby bump at Met Gala
In turn, Swift hasn’t just become one of the biggest artists of all time — she’s changed pop music altogether. Since then, she’s released 12 studio albums, re-recorded four as “Taylor’s Version,” and cultivated one of the most feverish fan bases in music. Furthermore, the deluxe edition consists of 16 tracks, half of which topped the Dance Club Songs chart — smashing the record (previously held by Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream) for the most No. 1s from a single album. “Same Ol’ Mistakes” is a cover of psychedelic rock band Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” — her first time remaking another artist’s song for her own album since “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)” on Music of the Sun. The album feels like one big celebration of life, as evidenced by Rihanna’s fire-engine red hair and No. 1 singles “Only Girl (In the World)” and “What’s My Name?” (the latter of which was Rih’s first collaboration with Drake). Despite being Good Girl Gone Bad’s lowest-charting single, Timberlake heralded the song as “the bridge for her to be accepted as an adult in the music industry.”
Instead, she wanted to capture the years of her life while they still represented what she was going through, writing about what she was observing and experiencing, from love and friendship to feeling like an outsider. Written throughout her adolescence, Taylor Swift was recorded at the end of 2005 and finalized by the time Swift finished her freshman year of high school. In a genre dominated by men, the odds were already stacked against Swift when she first broke into country music as a teenage female artist.
It’s a highlight on The Life of a Showgirl as it’s a testament that, regardless of how much time has passed or the fame that Swift has achieved, she still looks back on those who changed her life early on. Swift doesn’t want you to get it twisted, though — this is an album about the life of a showgirl, not an album about being a performer. She’s no longer anxious in love (“Eldest Daughter,” “Honey”) and for the first time, she owns all of her work and is in complete artistic control (“Father Figure”).
James Cameron’s epic love story starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet
She first gained prominence in 2005 with her debut album “Music of the Sun,” which quickly established her as a force in the music industry. Known for her unique style and chart-topping hits, she has influenced music and fashion worldwide. She told Winfrey that Brown may have been the love of her life and she has developed “a very close friendship” with him. The pair worked together on the song “Birthday Cake,” released that year.
An Era-By-Era Breakdown Of Taylor Swift’s Career
She formed a girl group with two classmates; when they were 15 years old, they scored an audition with music producer Evan Rodgers, who was visiting the island with his Barbadian wife. She is also a businesswoman who owns multiple ventures, including the popular cosmetics line Fenty Beauty and the lingerie brand Savage X Fenty. For her work on the single, Rihanna received her first Academy Award nomination, for best original song. Rihanna began working on a new record, but the project was delayed as she took a break from music.
Following the career-pivoting Rated R, 2010’s Loud offered a welcome return to the West Indian artist’s earlier sound. Rated R showcased Rihanna’s undeniable star power, and allowed her to shed her good-girl image once and for all. Badgal RiRi returned to her dancehall roots on her fifth No. 1 “Rude Boy,” which offsets the album’s harrowing motif. The singer had grown in leaps and bounds while taking musical risks, even penning nine of Rated R’s 13 tracks (she had no writing credits on Good Girl Gone Bad). Following three multi-platinum albums in a three-year span, Rihanna’s rebranding as a rebel at heart reached its apex.
Retrospective and reflective, Speak Now is an album about the speeches she could’ve, would’ve and should’ve said. The album’s title track pulled from the saying, “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” inspired by a friend’s ex-boyfriend getting engaged; meanwhile, “Mean” was everything Swift wanted to say to a critic who was continuously harsh about her vocals. Along with having more eyes on her, Swift also felt pressured to maintain her persona as a perfect young female role model amid a time when her peers like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato were attempting to rebrand to be more mature and sexier. But this meant that she faced more publicity and criticism, from naysayers who nitpicked her songwriting and vocals to the infamous Kanye West incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
While the world is still anticipating her ninth studio album, Rihanna — now a mom of two boys — continues to make her own rules and move at her own pace. With the glorious “Lift Me Up,” she found herself in the top 10 for the first time since 2017’s “Wild Thoughts.” Ever since ANTI, Rihanna’s devoted fanbase has been begging for a new album, with Rih playfully trolling them with responses like “I lost it” and Instagram captions that read, “Me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.” Accolades aside, ANTI is proof that magic happens when an artist of Rihanna’s caliber follows their own instincts in pursuit of creating a body of work — one that can outlast them and continue to inspire betista casino generations to come. For instance, “Sex with Me” is featured on the deluxe edition as a bonus track, but managed to crack the Hot 100 at No. 83 and reach No. 8 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. Elsewhere on ANTI, Rihanna drunk dials an ex (“Higher”), compares smoking weed to her lover (“James Joint”), and chastises a guy for getting emotionally attached after their fling (“Needed Me”).
Who is Rihanna?
Everything that happened after the success of Fearless pushed Swift from country music’s best-kept secret to a mainstream star. It might not be the romantic tale Swift dreamed of growing up, but her sophomore album signalled that bigger things were to come. It won Swift’s first Album Of The Year GRAMMY in 2010, at the time making her the youngest person to win the accolade at age 20.
- She continues to release new music of her own, though she believes in letting projects simmer before embarking on something new.
- Since then, the singer has released seven more albums, which are all platinum or multi-platinum, making her one of the best-selling artists in the world.
- Rihanna has released numerous hits, including “Umbrella,” “Diamonds,” “We Found Love,” and “Disturbia.”
- Writing reputation became a lifeline following the events that catalyzed it — a way to shed the so-called snakeskin and make peace with however the public wanted to view her.
- In her liner notes, she references Pablo Neruda’s poem “Tonight I Can Write,” stating that “Love is so short, forgetting is so long” is the overarching theme for the album.
- Though she initially planned to finish high school, she ultimately dropped out at age 16 to pursue a music career.
The song’s success buoyed sales for her debut full-length recording, Music of the Sun (2005), on which conventional R&B ballads shared space with Caribbean-flavored dance-pop that showcased her melodious Barbadian lilt. About the same time, she started a girl group with two friends, and in 2004 she attracted the attention of Evan Rogers, an American record producer. In September 2008, Rihanna joined fifteen other female artists to record and perform the song “Just Stand Up!” during the Stand Up to Cancer television special. That year, she released a photo book documenting the Last Girl on Earth tour, serving as a companion to her album Rated R (2009). Rihanna has eight number-one singles on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, seven on the Airplay chart, and sixteen on the Rhythmic chart. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News observed that Rihanna often creates music videos that are thought-provoking and aligned with the themes of her songs.
In the United States, it is currently more popular than Come and See but less popular than Shutter. The movie has moved up the charts by 179 places since yesterday. The pair meet and fall in love on the Titanic, the greatest ship to sail the oceans. Rose is a high-society young woman who is being forced into a loveless marriage with a wealthy man.
Throughout The Life of a Showgirl, Swift, Martin and Shellback craft tracks that go beyond what they created with 1989 and reputation. Reuniting with her pop powerhouse collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, who worked on her biggest pop radio hits like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “Delicate,” “Blank Space,” and “Shake It Off,” was a return to form after the fog of TTPD. (“And all the headshots on the walls/ Of the dance hall are of the b—es/ Who wish I’d hurry up and die/ But I’m immortal now.”) On “The Life of a Showgirl,” she declares with her fellow showgirl that she isn’t handing over the baton just yet. The showgirl is actually the one in charge (“I was your father figure/ You pulled the wrong trigger/ This empire belongs to me”), alluding to her battle to retain her masters.
The record also featured the popular power ballad “Unfaithful,” as well as singles “We Ride” and “Break It Off.” The album debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart and earned her first No. 1 hit with the catchy pop single “SOS,” which spent three weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100. In 2008, Rihanna topped the chart three times, twice with her own songs “Disturbia” and “Take a Bow,” plus a feature on T.I.’s “Live Your Life.” She has also earned nine number-one songs on the UK Singles Chart and ranks second to the Beatles for the most million-selling singles in the country. This made her the artist with the most digital single awards and the first performer to exceed RIAA’s 100 million cumulative singles certification threshold. With estimated worldwide sales exceeding 250 million records as of 2023, Rihanna is one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
Seven years into an already extraordinary career, 2012’s Unapologetic became Rihanna’s first album to debut at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart. With this feat, she became the youngest artist to attain the most chart-toppers in a five-year span. That same carefree spirit can be heard in the feminist track “Raining Men,” which features Nicki Minaj — their first of two collabs, as they joined forces again for “Fly,” the final single off the rapper’s iconic Pink Friday album. While “What’s My Name?” may not outshine Rih and Drizzy’s other collabs — including 2011’s “Take Care” or 2016’s “Work” — the second she sings, “Hey, boy, I really wanna see if you can go downtown with a girl like me,” it’s impossible not to whine your waist to the riddim. Through lead single “Russian Roulette” and bitingly catchy anthems “Stupid in Love,” “Fire Bomb,” “Photographs,” “Cold Case Love,” and “The Last Song,” Rihanna explored her angst and confusion. Rihanna was a familiar face by 2007, but with the arrival of her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad, she graduated from cookie-cutter pop star to bonafide icon.
“If you listen to the lyrics to that song, you know the depth and how far she’s come.” “The minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn’t exist,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2007. The post featured a photo of Rihanna holding her new daughter, Rocki Irish Mayers, who was born on September 13. Rihanna is a Grammy-winning singer known for such No. 1 pop hits as “Umbrella,” “SOS,” “Diamonds,” and “Work.” In 2023 Rihanna revealed she was again pregnant by performing at the Super Bowl halftime show with a visible baby bump; her representatives subsequently confirmed that the singer was expecting her second child. Rihanna’s personal life attracted intense media attention.
Its win for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 2014 GRAMMYs, however, proved that Rihanna’s reign wasn’t letting up anytime soon. “Mr. Jesus, I’d love to be a queen/ But I’m from the left side of an island/ Never thought this many people would even know my name,” she pleads in the seven-minute two-parter. Her swagger is boisterous in “Phresh Out the Runway,” “Jump,” and strip club anthem “Pour It Up,” but “Nobody’s Business” really drives home the album’s theme of being unbothered. Vocally, Rihanna’s strength lies in her ability to evoke raw emotion à la “Stay.” Featuring Mikky Ekko, the stripped-down, slow-burning piano ballad narrowly missed the top spot on the Hot 100 but gave Rihanna her 24th top 10 hit, surpassing Whitney Houston’s record of 23 in 2013. One of Rihanna’s most precious offerings to date, “Diamonds” emerged as a self-love mantra due to its uplifting “Shine bright like a diamond” chant. Its lead single “Diamonds” resonated in an equally major way, giving Rih her 12th No. 1 on the Hot 100.
And Eminem that appeared on albums of theirs; many felt her vocals on the latter’s “Love the Way You Lie” (2010) lent resonance to the song’s depiction of an abusive relationship. With the assistance of such high-profile collaborators as Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, she abandoned the tropical rhythms that had adorned her first two albums and recorded a collection of sleek R&B that presented her as a fiercely independent and rebellious woman. He helped Fenty record a demo that led to an audition with the rapper Jay-Z, who at the time headed the Def Jam record label, and he soon signed the budding vocalist. Rihanna exclusively uses her surname for ventures outside of music to keep her business and artistic identities separate. In November 2015, Rihanna partnered with Benoit Demouy to launch Fr8me, a Los Angeles-based beauty and stylist agency supporting artists with commercial bookings, photo shoots, campaigns, and red-carpet appearances. In March 2015, Rihanna was announced as a co-owner of the music streaming platform Tidal, alongside several other artists.