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Rihanna · S1 E5
Evan Rogers
American producer Evan Rogers is on vacation in Barbados when he hears about a fifteen-year-old with an extraordinary voice. She auditions in his hotel room. He invites her to Connecticut to record demos
A farmhouse in County Down, Northern Ireland, October 2011. Rihanna runs through a golden wheat field while Calvin Harris's beat shakes the monitors, and the director yells for one more take.
Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris -- We Found Love (official music video). Shot in Northern Ireland with raw, chaotic energy, the video captures euphoria and self-destruction in equal measure. It spent ten weeks at number one in the US.
We Found Love (2011)
From Talk That Talk, produced by Calvin Harris. The track opens with a spoken vocal and builds into a euphoric synth drop that borrows from European dance music. Rihanna's voice floats above the production rather than fighting it, repeating a lyric about finding love in a hopeless place until it becomes a mantra. The song sold over ten million copies worldwide and became the best-selling single of 2012.
The Machine
Between 2009 and 2012, Rihanna released four albums in four years: Rated R, Loud, Talk That Talk, and Unapologetic. No major pop artist had maintained that pace since the early days of Motown. She treated the album cycle like a conveyor belt, recording dozens of songs per project and discarding anything that did not hit immediately.
TAP TO REVEAL: What record did "We Found Love" break on the Billboard Hot 100?
How many studio albums did Rihanna release between 2009 and 2012?
Consideration feat. SZA (Rihanna)
The opening track of ANTI (2016). A spare, confident declaration of wanting to be seen for who you really are. After years of relentless output, this track sounds like someone finally exhaling.
Only Girl, Loud, and the Pop Takeover
After four albums in four years, Rihanna goes quiet. The silence will last longer than anyone expects, and the album that finally breaks it will rewrite everything the world thinks it knows about her.
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