Member Since: 3/3/2011
Posts: 23,567
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Originally posted by Ties
I find it entertaining how 90% of the review encompasses Rihanna's personal life. Reviewers trying to rival the tabloids when it comes to articles.  |
Her personal life is fair game when the entire apparent purpose of an album is to throw the insulting aspects of that life in the public's face. And in case you missed the assessment of the quality of this storytelling:
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The rest of the album is a synth-pop slog that plays like the companion piece of Nan Goldin's "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency".
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themes that are mirrored in Unapologetic's surplus of minor-key treacle. The perfunctory Ibiza thump of "Right Now" reflects badly on both her and producer David Guetta while "Fresh Off the Runway" is capitalist braggadocio (nonsense grade) so static it borders on unmusical. The Auto-Tune on Future's "Loveeeeeee Song" feature calls to a mind a dog vomiting while Rihanna, in turn, sounds like she's been roused from a medicated slumber.
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Rihanna's stature has been built on undeniable singles like "We Found Love" and "The Only Girl in the World", but tracks of this caliber are nowhere to be found. Lead single "Diamonds" mixes simile, cliché, and metaphor, serving as a potent reminder that someone thought this was the best the album had to offer. Oú est ma "Umbrella"? On "Power It Up", she sounds alternately robotic and narcotized as she sings about how she's so rich she can pay for a $100 valet service and a night at the strip club and doesn't need friends.
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The album closes with songs that are more potently disturbing than the attention-grabbing "Nobody's Business". With production from The-Dream and Carlos McKinney, Rihanna devotes nearly seven minutes-- a pop aeon-- to "Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary", where she sings, "Who knew the course of this one drive/ Injured us fatally/ You took the best years of my life/ I took the best years of your life/ Felt like love struck me in the night/ I pray that love don't strike twice," over a riff that copies from the Police's "Message in a Bottle". It then becomes a florid song suite, mixing prayer and star-is-born autobiography. "Let's live in the moment/ As long we got each other…" she sings, pausing before the stunning "I'm prepared to die in the moment."
Given these qualities, it's hard not to wonder where else the album might have gone. Would it fare better if the topics were the same, but set to songs as combustible as "Don't Stop the Music"? If her pain and shame and can't-quit-you-babe motif was delivered with some humor? If she kept her personal drama to herself and sang about rolling fat joints on her bodyguard's head and did more duetting with the dude from Coldplay?
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Unapologetic rubs our faces in the inconvenient, messy truth of Rihanna's life which, even if it were done well, would be hard to celebrate as a success. But the measurable failure is the album's music. On a track-by-track basis, the songs make for dull labor, not worth our time.
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