She also won her first GRAMMY in 2008 (Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for “Umbrella”) and scored four other nominations, including Record Of The Year. Good Girl Gone Bad remains Rihanna’s best-selling album and marks her greatest reinvention as she adopted a more rebellious sound. The melancholy “Rehab” is a clever metaphor for lost love, co-written by Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. Produced by Tricky Stewart, the LP’s juggernaut lead single “Umbrella” featuring Jay-Z skyrocketed to No. 1 in 17 countries. Her official introduction to the world also hit No. 1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart; she boasts 33 on the tally, second behind only the Queen of Pop herself, Madonna. 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.

• It was especially refreshing to see Rihanna emerge from one of the darkest periods of her life as exuberant as ever.
• When Swift released the lead single “Look What You Made Me Do,” a song she initially wrote as a poem about not trusting specific people, many assumed the album would center on vengeance and drama.
• This evolution is mentioned throughout Lover, particularly in a direct callback to 2012’s Red, “Daylight,” which sees her describe her love as “golden” rather than “burning red.”
• Following the success with folklore and evermore, Swift’s intrigue was at a then-all-time high upon the release of Midnights.
• Without exactly setting out to create an album, she began dreaming of fictional stories and characters with various narrative arcs, allowing her imagination to run free.

Although Jay-Z initially thought “Pon de Replay” was too big for a new artist, he invited her to audition. Rihanna’s demo was sent to rapper Jay-Z, who had just become the president and CEO of the record label Def Jam Recordings. In 2005, she became the first artist to sign with Syndicated Rhythm Productions, the production company founded by Rogers and Carl Sturken. Unnamed and without original material, the girl group auditioned for American producer Evan Rogers, who recalled that “the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn’t exist”. Though she initially planned to finish high school, she ultimately dropped out at age 16 to pursue a music career. Signed to Def Jam Recordings, she debuted with the Caribbean-inspired records Music of the Sun (2005) and A Girl Like Me (2006), both of which reached the top ten of the US Billboard 200. Rihanna has worked with music video director Anthony Mandler on seventeen music videos, the first being “Unfaithful” (2006). Rihanna was also influenced by artists such as Janet Jackson, Aaliyah, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Grace Jones, Lil’ Kim, Prince, and Brandy. In her youth, Rihanna often watched Bob Marley on television due to his popularity in the Caribbean. Rihanna identified Brandy’s fourth album, Afrodisiac (2004), as a primary source of inspiration for her album Good Girl Gone Bad. After moving to the US, she was exposed to a wide range of musical genres, which she said had a profound effect on her.

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And yet, she has still come out the other side, sparkling, self-assured and ready to revel in a career built on resilience and reinvention — something only a true showgirl could achieve. When she announced the album, she declared, “And baby, that’s showbiz for you.” No one knows that better than someone who has been through the ringer in the industry like Swift has. What is most apparent on the album, though, is just how much Swift embraces every aspect of who she is.

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The lead single, “Work”, topped the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, with the third and fourth singles, “Needed Me” and “Love on the Brain”, peaking within the top ten. With an eclectic blend of genres such as pop, dancehall, and psychedelic soul, Anti peaked at number one on the Billboard 200, marking her second chart-topping record in the US. It spent ten non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making it both Rihanna’s longest-running chart-topping single and the longest-running number one song in the US in 2011. To support the album, Rihanna launched the Loud Tour in June 2011, which included a record-breaking ten sold-out shows at The O2 Arena in London—the most by a female artist in the venue’s history.

• In 2005, she became the first artist to sign with Syndicated Rhythm Productions, the production company founded by Rogers and Carl Sturken.
• In December 2013, she topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart with a feature on Eminem’s song “The Monster”.
• “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.
• 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 June 2007, Rihanna released her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, to much fanfare.
• Rihanna has delivered pop hit after pop hit since bursting onto the music scene in the mid-2000s.
• (Rih recorded an equally moving sequel for her Loud album.) Three years later, the two confronted their inner demons in “The Monster,” and their musical chemistry scored a GRAMMY in 2015 for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration.

Eminem feat. Rihanna — “The Monster”

Swift also found a new sense of creativity within this new mindset, one where she aimed to still embed playful themes in her songwriting but with less snark than that of “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do.” Leaning into Lover being a “love letter to love,” Swift explored every aspect of it. After finding love amongst chaos with reputation, Swift was learning to deal with the anxiety and fear of losing her partner — became a major theme of another aptly titled album, Lover. With time, though, it became clear that the response to reputation became muddled with the public’s overall perception of her at the time — some even claimed that Swift was ahead of her time with the album’s overall sound. Although Swift said that the album has its vindictive moments — even declaring that the “old Taylor” is dead on the bridge of “Look What You Made Me Do” — it’s a vulnerable record for her. Following the release of 1989, Swift became a cultural juggernaut, and the album has had an omnipresence in music since. And where some might trade a hit or two at the expense of their artistic integrity, Swift didn’t falter — instead, her lyrics were just as heartfelt and intimate as they were on prior albums.

Rihanna cuts off questioner outside courthouse

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. Looking at Lover retrospectively, it’s an album that almost symbolizes a bookend in her discography. 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. And even despite matching the 1.2 million first-week sales of her previous releases, some concluded that the album was her first commercial failure when compared to 1989. Even after Swift spent some time away from the spotlight, the public didn’t immediately gravitate toward her return. In 2016, it was confirmed that Rihanna would release her music through her own label, Westbury Road Entertainment, founded in 2005 and named after her childhood home in Barbados. Including Beyoncé and Jay-Z, 16 artist stakeholders co-own Tidal, most of whom own a 3% equity stake. He highlighted her multifaceted career, “from her business achievements through Fenty to her tremendous record as an activist and philanthropist”.

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The dance-pop and R&B heavy record, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, featured several hit songs, including the singles “Don’t Stop the Music,” “Shut Up and Drive,” and “Hate That I Love You” with Ne-Yo. With its follow-up, “Our Song” — which spent six consecutive weeks on the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart — she became the youngest person to solely write and sing a No. 1 country single; she also became the first female solo artist in country music to write or co-write every song on an album. With the dance-pop set Loud (2010), she reflected on the fun she had while recording the album, incorporating ballads, party anthems, and empowering love songs. Swift still remained in the pop lane with reputation, largely leaning on Antonoff and the Martin/Shellback team. She stayed away from public appearances, didn’t do any press, and missed the album schedule fans became accustomed to. For years, Swift was on a strict two-year cycle — she’d release an album one year, tour the next, and then release a new album the following year. In turn, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and more pop stars have refused to conform or stick to what they’ve done prior. It was a very vulnerable time in my life, and I refused to let that be the image. In addition to being a talented recording artist, Rihanna is a billionaire entrepreneur with multiple successful business ventures. Rihanna’s latest work, Anti, arrived in January 2016, topping the mainstream album chart for two weeks. In June 2007, Rihanna released her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, to much fanfare. The album’s second single, “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want,” made it into the top 40. Rihanna released her debut album, Music of the Sun, in August 2005. 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. Rihanna’s first studio album, Music of the Sun, was released in August 2005 to much intrigue. Her last No. 1 single, “Work” featuring Drake, topped the chart for nine weeks. Her first No. 1 song, “SOS,” topped the chart for three weeks in 2006, while her Grammy-winning Jay-Z collaboration “Umbrella” far surpassed that the following year, maintaining the lead spot for seven weeks. No matter what genre Rihanna touches or what artist she links up with, she brings her full self to each session whilst completely immersing herself into the music — taking on different personas to make the collab well worth it. Amid smash collabs, Rihanna and Coldplay’s intricate “Princess of China” number gets lost in the shuffle, but it speaks to her charm as it’s the band’s first album (2011’s Mylo Xyloto) to feature another artist. The one-off single is so quintessentially Rihanna that it notably kicked off her Super Bowl halftime show. Rihanna also said that Carey’s “Vision of Love” (1990) was the song that inspired her to pursue a career in music. Vulnerability is explored on the pop and synth-pop record Unapologetic (2012), which Vulture described as an “act of defiance … to sort out her feelings about her … ex-boyfriend Brown and her public image”. betista casino Rihanna’s rock-imbued record Rated R (2009), released after the assault by her then-boyfriend, Chris Brown, had a much darker tone and was filled with various emotions she experienced since then. And on Aug. 13, she opened up about the concept and creation of the record on her now-fiancé Travis Kelce’s podcast, “New Heights.” To help explain this chapter of her life, Swift brings together a myriad of collaborators — from Stevie Nicks as fellow poetess, to duets with Florence Welch and Post Malone — and leans on real and fictional characters, like Clara Bow, Peter Pan (“Peter”), and Patti Smith. It pokes fun at so-called fans who overstep with her personal life (“But Daddy I Love Him”), says goodbye to a city that gave her a home (“So Long London”), and muses on how her own celebrity has stunted her growth (“Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?”). As a result, there had arguably never been more excitement for a Taylor Swift album than for The Tortured Poets Department — especially because the announcement came on the heels of her lucky 13th GRAMMY win in February. Armageddon —her first full-length since 2001’s Sister Nancy Meets Fireproof — was released this summer, seven years after it was recorded with Mad Professor in the U.K. In 2016, Sister Nancy received 10 years of back royalties as well as royalties going forward, which allowed her to retire from the bank and pursue music full time. Like many artists of her era who either had bad contracts or no contract at all, Sister Nancy did not benefit from the popularity of “Bam Bam” for the majority of her career. “And remember, I had songs before that like ‘One, Two’ and ‘Transport Connection’; they were playing, but I didn’t hear ‘Bam Bam’ until I come to the U.S.” Yet the song made its way to the States, where it found popularity in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut’s Caribbean diaspora and caught the ear of hip-hop innovators of the ’80s. She recorded the early dancehall anthem in 1982 when she was just 20 years old as a last-minute addition to her debut album, One, Two.