Rihanna "Good Girl Gone Bad" Real-Time Record Review

I've never done one of these before, but I'm completely excited by this album, maybe more so than anything else to surface this year. So, you can read my appreciate it while I'm appreciating it.

01. "Umbrella" featuring Jay-Z: Come on, it's "Umbrella", rapidly becoming one of the best singles of the year. I would love to hear the Jay-Z section axed out, but it doesn't bother me enough to make me devalue it any. Much has already been made of her turning "Umbrella" into a four-syllable word, and it is endearing: "under my um-ber-ell-ah", but attention must be paid also to her "Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay" where the third and fourth "ays" are sung lower. This is another one of those songs that sounds so much better at high volumes, where you can hear just how much is going on in the background: the synths, the bass, the strings (there's something string-like, I don't know what it is). Frontloading the album with this song is either going to be a ballsy "This isn't even the best song on the album"-type statement, or a harbinger of collossal disappointment.

02. "Push Up on Me": Opens with a beat that reminds me of a certain gun off that James Bond Goldeneye game for Nintendo 64 that I spent entirely too many evenings playing at friends' houses. This sounds like a Neptunes track, but I have no idea who it is.

03. "Please Don't Stop the Music": This beat is incredible, more of a techno beat than a pop or R&B beat. At first listen, it almost sounds like Daft Punk is backing Rihanna. I really dig the sampled "woo-hoo-hoos" in the background, it sounds like Goofy skiing off a cliff. This is too good, actually, the bass almost drops out, gets all obscured as she sings, than explodes back to the forefront on the chorus. Holy hell, this just gets better and better. The music drops right out, leaving just Rihanna and the beat, before the murky bass comes back in with some backing vocals. This is just beyond almost anything else I've heard this year. Incredible.

04. "Breakin' Dishes": At first listen, this sounds like "Maneater" but it's ANGRY. Rihanna is pissed, but she also "super-cool". I heard Timbaland was on this album, and this sounds like him, but it's not him, at least according to wikipedia. It sounds like someone heard "Sexy Back" and said "Oh I see where you wanted to go with this, let me fix it" and then went ahead and did fix it. Rihanna puts the same pronounciation on "Marshmallow" as "umbrella" when she sings "I'm roasting marsha-mellows on the fire". God, this is good, too. The beat is something else. Then it gets more aggressive, I'm thinking like "Army of Me" as she announces "I'm gonna blow this house down!"

05. "Shut Up and Drive": Starts with electric guitars, big, crunchy electric guitars, which promptly drop out, but pick up again right before the chorus. Wiki says this is the next single, and it's pretty bad-assed, with Rihanna singing about big, booming bass in the back while guitars mesh with the beat. Then, at the end of the chorus, the music stops entirely and Rihanna says "Now shut up and drive". This is a pretty untouchable first five songs. Oh wow, the beat picks up and the guitars drop out and it threatens to blow my speakers, before coming back. Then, a siren and a car accident to end it off.

06. "Hate That I Love You" featuring Ne-Yo: And here we have a Rihanna/Ne-Yo ballad to slow things down, they were getting pretty loud and aggressive there. But, it's not exxactly inferior. I mean, I guess it is in comparision to the first five, but it's not a bad song. It's got a seductive little beat, and a terrific chorus where Rihanna bemoans "I hate how much I love you". If you're worrying this is like "Unfaithful", which is what happened last time Ne-Yo wrote her a ballad, cast those doubts aside. This one suits her much better. The secret is Rihanna has a neat voice, but it's not an American Idol-type voice, so keep her away from vocal gymnastics and it will be fine. If she tries to do too much, it just comes off whiny.

07. "Say It": This is a mid-tempo one, kind of chilled out. A laid-back, easy beat. It would sound perfect coming from a studio, driving around on a summer afternoon. Hopefully, the next track is a banger, like #4 or #5, because if it is this is the perfect segue, it's a little livelier than "Hate That I Love You" but still fairly mellow. It's kind of like what that new Akon single would be like if Akon wasn't completely terrible. I actually really like this beat the more I live with it.

08. "Sell Me Candy": It's not quite a banger, like #4 or #5, but it's a lot more uptempo. The chorus bears more than a passing resemblance to "Umbrella". These are by far the weirdest Rihanna vocals I've heard, it's more like she's rappping, or reading really fast rather than singing. The chorus is good, though. I can't actually really hear anything that's being said, but it's terrific. Amazing, even. I was kind of worried, actually, given the title, that this was going to be like Kelis, so I'm really glad it isn't. I really don't like Kelis.

09. "Lemme Get That": A pseudo-Middle Eastern sample, with a pretty hypnotic bass. Then, it gives way to a weird shout-spoken vocals, with a weird horn sample, and it's actually pretty damned nasty-sounding. There is so much going on here, and it's so off-kilter that it shouldn't work, but it seems to be working. Yeah, it's working. The beat is big and undeniable. Wiki says this is Timbaland, and it all makes sense now as it's completely wrong and weird, yet all comes together. Why is it that everything Timbaland has done for everyone else in the last few years has gone so right, while his own solo one went so wrong. What was really weird about the Timbaland solo album is that the best tracks were the ones that should not, in a million years work, like the collaborations with She Wants Revenge or Fall Out Boy, yet the ones that seemed like homeruns (J.T., 50 Cent) were clunkers. Rihanna drops a "uh-uh-uh" near the end that sounds just like the chorus to "London Bridge" like she replaced the "How come every time you come 'round..." with uh-uhs.

10. "Rehab": Not actually a cover of the Amy Winehouse song, though I was actually kind of hoping it would be. Instead, it's a Timbaland-produced slow song about Rihanna checking into rehab for a broken heart. The synths in the background are good. It's nothing new, really. If you've heard a Timballad before, you've heard this, though that doesn't mean it's not good. Actually, it's perfectly fine. I was not expecting the Justin Timberlake appearance, though. He doesn't do much, just a few "ohs". Actually, yeah, I do like this.

11. "Question Existing": What a weird one, a big, pounding beat. But, it's a slow-moving, almost lurching beat. The vocals are all distorted, given a real edge. Ooo, but the chorus is even bigger, with synths coming down crashing behind her. Then, at the 2:29 mark, Rihanna just starts talking: "I like to think that I'm pretty normal. I laugh, I get mad, I get hurt, I think guys suck sometimes." It's staggering really. It's so unexpected, it's like she stops the big show, and takes a break and lets you behind the curtain.

12. "Good Girl Gone Bad": And just so to keep you on your toes, this one opens with acoustic guitar strumming. I think it's about a girl from a bad home becoming a stripper. The chorus is super-catchy, ending with "You better learn how to treat us right" with all the backing vocals coming in at once. It's a perfect closer to the album. When hearing that the title of this album is "Good Girl Gone Bad" it invokes memories of Christina Aguiera's "Stripped" where she went so over the top dirrty to put herself back in the spotlight that she's only now just starting to recover as a respected singer. So, when you hear the title, you're expecting the album to be all about Rihanna growing up and being bad. But, really, what the title seems to mean, rather, is that Rihanna doesn't want to go bad. She just wants to be loved. She even repeats it at the end of one of the songs, "I just want to love". The chorus implores the listener not to be one of the people who makes a good girl go bad, because "once a good girl goes bad, (they) die forever."

I think I might just have a new album of the year. Unbelievable. I really dug her album last year, but the number of clunkers outweighed the moments of excellence. But there's not a bad track on the album, not even a misstep, really.

L.Pierre "Dip"

What's weird is that Arab Strap was always thought to be Aidan Moffat's vocals and lyrics with Malcolm Middleton's instrumentation. Yet, when 2007 saw the early release of solo albums from both of the members of the now defunct group, Middleton's was a straight-forward rock-y type album, while Moffat's solo output is a lush ambient album with very little in the way of vocals, certainly no growling spoken words about sex. This is the second song off of said album, and like the rest of it, it's a quiet lilting song. "Weir's Way" starts with a bit of the seagull calls that blend through from the first track but then a sweet acoustic riff comes in and it rides that riff until that gives way to some horns, and almost choral harmonies before finally picking up a beat at the 7:51 mark which it follows to the end as the music rises and surges before subsiding again. Eleven minutes and thirty-six seconds of pure bliss.

This album is being completely slept-on, though a large bit of that is due to it not having any kind of North American distribution. It's probably a Top 5 album of the year, so far, for me, though.

L.Pierre "Weir's Way"

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"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children"

(quote from William Makepeace Thackeray)

Little Children: I'm still plugging away at 2006, hoping to get to 50 movies seen (Two away), and this was my most looked-forward-to, yet still-unseen flick. And it did not disappoint. I don't know if I'm completely onboard with calling this a suburban satire, though portions of it are definitely delightfully satiric. It's the story of two couples, where the wife from one family (Kate Winslet) feels trapped and alone until she meets Brad (Patrick Wilson), the husband from the other family, and they begin an affair. This affair is set against the backdrop of a neighbourhood where a pedophile, Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley) has recently moved back in with his mother. The whole thing is chock full of great performances: there are of course the two Oscar-nominated ones, Winslet, and Haley, but there are also the two overlooked roles: Noah Emmerich as Brad's old friend Larry who reconnects with him, and obsesses over the pedophile as a way of salvaging his life in crisis, and Phyllis Somerville as Ronnie's mother, who is possessed of an uncommon inner strength to defend her son, regardless of what he's done. Terrific film.

The Spirit of the Beehive {El Espiritu de la colmena}: I always check TCM on Sunday nights because they seem to show random foreign movies at that time that you never see at any other time of the week (I missed Tokyo Drifter when I was sick, but caught some of Seven Samurai in recent weeks), and I hadn't heard of this one, looked it up on IMDB, and decided to watch it based on the praise some gave it. Now having watched it, I'm not sure I can really give it much of a description. It's about a family in 1940s Spain that has grown distant from each other. The mother and father hardly talk, no one seems to pay much attention to either daughter. Together, the daughters see a screening of Frankenstein. When one daughter asks the other about why Frankenstein is killed, the other daughter explains it was fake, and that Frankenstein lives near them. They frequen an old abandoned building, looking for Frankenstein, and generally pass the time away. Later, when someone comes to live at the abandoned building, the youngest daughter, Ana, befriends him. It is beautifully shot, and looking it up on IMDB, the cinematographer was beginning to go blind, which I can believe becase The Spirit of the Beehive can be watched almost as a catalogue of beautiful images that he sought to get down on film before his eyesight gave out. It is amazingly slow-paced, but there's enough to look at, that it should never really get you down. I'm really glad I saw

The Best Eleven Singles of the Half-Year

Man, Rich Boy is totally a goober.

11. Young Jeezy featuring R.Kelly - Go Getta: Even though Young Jeezy continues to be the most superfluous rapper going, this one succeds on the strength of the beat, and R.Kelly's appearances.

10. Three 6 Mafia - Doe Boy Fresh: I love the epic samples used by Three 6 Mafia, this one is no different. Sure, it's the less skilled younger brother, the Keith Gretzky to Stay Fly's Wayne, but, in some ways, that makes it even more endearing.

09. Modest Mouse - Dashboard: It ain't no "Float On", but it's still a ramshackle catchy little ditty.

08. Diddy featuring Keyshia Cole - Last Night: This is the best Diddy single since "Bad Boy For Life". It's completely un-Diddy in that it's a bizarre 80s sounding beat, with Keyshia Cole crying over top of it about how sad she is, while Diddy is at his least braggadocious, lamenting lost loves. It's a toss-up between which is better, as the edit is about 2 minutes shorter and cuts out a lot of Cole's whining, which grates after a while, but the full-length has the completely insane ending with Diddy phoning his girl's house and threatening to shoot up her place if she is, in fact, just screeing out his calls.

07. Rihanna featuring Jay-Z - Umbrella: You know, I didn't even like "Pon De Replay" when it came out (still don't, actually), so I'm completely confuzzled as to just where all these great pop songs came from. Time will tell if this holds up to "S.O.S." which was played 'round the clock, but became better with each play, or if I will burn out quickly on this one. I would guess the former, but Jay-Z's half-assed appearance could drag it down to the latter.
06. [b]My Chemical Romance - Famous Last Words[/b]: Yeah, Throughsilver was right, this is THE MCR single. Miles better than The Black Parade which has a good start and finish, but no meat to the middle, this is just DRIPPING with emotion. Billy Corgan wishes he could hit these heights of emotional melodrama.

05. Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye: A late-enough 2006er that I'm counting it for 2007, as that's when everyone started playing it. It's a complete mystery why this is doing so well, in that it really in no way sounds like anything current and is more of a throwback to late 90s alternative rock. It's a terrific song, though, my favourite part being the way he repeats that one section of lines with added vigor until the last time he shouts them right over the guitars.

04. Rich Boy featuring Polow Da Don - Throw Some D's: Rich Boy kind of looks like a goober, but, really, he has next to nothing to do with how good this song is. Really, it's all Polow Da Don (Who might want to shorten his name to something easier, PDD maybe?). PDD produces it, and it rides this simple, laid-back sample with a big bass then gets more complicated as the song goes on, mixing in this little sample that I can't quite place. But, what's more, is PDD than comes in after the second chorus and drops the best verse of the entire song, especially when he brags that "Every freak should have a picture of my dick/On their walls!" My only complaint is it's too early, as radio will have moved on, and this really should've been the song of the summer.

03. Ciara - Like A Boy: Ciara continues her miracle run, completing the Triple Crown of great singles after her appearance on last year's Field Mob single "So What", and last fall's "Promise" which was beyond amazing: a declaration of love/R&B personals ad riding a Prince-sounding beat. This one just might eclipse the other two (Maybe not, "Promise" is really, REALLY good). It has this strings sample that sounds just like that Diamonds commercial with the silhouettes of happy couples that was ridiculed oh-so-well on Family Guy. Ciara sings about double-standards and talks about how maybe she'll start staying out all night, leaving her cell on vibrate, and making boys cry, wishing that she "could act just like a boy" which is a pretty admirable song to attempt given that weird Internet rumor going around a year or two ago. But, the song is greatness. I'm hoping for many more Ciara singles this year, as she is just on a roll.

02. The Killers - Read My Mind: I really think all the reviewers last year lazily lambasting the Killers for copping Springsteen because Brandon Flowers dropped his name in an interview missed the mark. The Killers maybe were going for Springsteen lyrical content, but they never sounded anything like the Boss. No, I'm pretty sure, and judging by the opening of this one with the ambient keyboard sounds so reminiscient of "Where the Streets Have No Name", that The Killers dream is really to be this generation's U2. This song is nigh-perfect, too loud to be on the "soft-rock" stations, but tempered enough to be perfectly acceptable as the soundtrack to the next romantic comedy. The only things that throw me off are Flowers' weird hiccupped delivery on a couple of lines, but even that is becoming quite endearing.

01. Omarion - Icebox: This should have been such an amazingly huge hit that it's ridiculous. Timbaland delivers a better beat on this one than anything on his own album: twinkling piano keys, and a perfect throbbing bassline. But, really, Omarion's the star here, lamenting a girl he loves; he's losing her, he'll soon have lost her, because the girl he loves doesn't exist, except in his memory. Omarion sings the hell out of this one. Easy #1 single of the year. I wouldn't be surprised to see this still sitting here at the end of the year.

Why Am I Telling You This For the Last Time?

This title just kind of hit me tonight, and I was sure it must've been a great book I'd read at some point and forgotten, but it turns out, it was a Jerry Seinfeld comedy special that I'm pretty sure I never saw. Anyways, it is also somewhat of a mission statement. This makes the third time I've lost/misplaced/forgotten my password(s) and had to discard a previous blog.

So, basically, what I'm saying, is that if I lose the password to this one, I'm out. I'm done. No more blogging. Not that I expect to stick to that promise, or stick to any sort of regular posting schedule.

Also, I seem to have ads. Click them. Or don't.

Thus far, this blog has no content, but it does have a hastily-created header, now. And a picture at the bottom. The header is a lighthouse somewhere in the lower end of Argentina, featured prominently in the film Happy Together where lonely people go to discard their loneliness or something like that. The picture below is from my backyard. Anyways, I expect I will soon be rambling at some length about music or movies or something, if you're greatly irritated by my ramblings, go to the link bar on the right, because any and all of Throughsilver, Tom, or James write much more eloquently about music than I do.