This Week On Billboard: Rihanna f. Britney Spears – S&M

This Week On Billboard is where I unabashedly critique the current no. 1 hit on Billboard.com, the major yardstick for what's "hot" in music today. In order to simplify the review for those who don't want to read the whole article, each song is given a "!" rating, in which the finest grabs five of them. It's been gone for a while, now it's back after a 22-month hiatus.

A review of this week's number one single right after you meet Rihanna in her boudoir







Lately, Rihanna is being talked about often, but I feel it’s for all the wrong reasons. Now that she’s romantically unattached, rumor blogs and tabloid pages have been feasting on her conquests, like her secret relationship with Drake, her sexting affairs with Colin Farrell, her public dates with Ryan Philippe, her girl-on-girl flings with an unknown that wrote a book about it. With all of that covered, people have basically neglected the fact that Rihanna has released five number one singles in a span of a year. After “S&M” reached the top of the charts this week, she is now the fastest solo artist to release ten number one singles in Billboard’s 52-year history. The only artists who have gained ten Billboard No. 1’s faster than her are The Beatles and The Supremes. I know that there is no proven correlation between the artist’s merits and the amount of number one singles he or she has, but that record is a massive accomplishment nonetheless.

Yet, Rihanna hasn’t really been denying the allegations thrown at her either. She’s actually becoming more overt about her hedonism, even if she’s most likely doing so to endorse the lewdness of “S&M”. Like the title suggests, “S&M” is about sexual masochism. But even when you see transparently sexual lines in the lyric sheet like “sticks and stones might break my bones, but chains and whips excite me”, it seems like the release of the single hadn’t offended anyone too much. Maybe it’s due to the fact that her nymphomaniac persona here is as believable as her hair color. It’s not as if Rihanna isn’t an effective harbinger of sexual liberation. Whenever I hear “Rude Boy”, I’m convinced that she’s going to “give it to me harder”. But in “S&M”, her erotic confessions aren’t believable at all for whatever reason.

The best reason I can think of why this fell flat is that this Stargate production isn’t particularly sexy, which is weird because the Norwegian production team have created incredibly seductive tracks for RiRi before, such as the aforementioned “Rude Boy” (*) and another number one hit from last year, “What’s My Name?”. “S&M”, with its rock-tinged electro-stomp beat, sounds like a retread of her mediocre singles like “Shut Up And Drive” and “Disturbia”. This particular brand of Rihanna isn’t horrible, but it also make her seem conceived in a factory. And like I said before, Rihanna is at her best when she lets her Caribbean lineage permeate into the track, and I would prefer something like that than the “rock star” persona she puts on here.

What I’m most excited about this “digital re-release” that went number one this week is definitely this chance to hear a once-in-a-lifetime Rihanna-Britney pair-up. For the past ten years, they have ranked #1 and #2 in my favorite female pop stars list (**), so to witness them collaborate for a number one hit is akin to watching Shawn Michaels and The Rock form a tag team for a Wrestlemania main event. It may be disappointing that the song that brought them together weren’t as strong as I wanted it to be; but this is a rare gift from the gods of pop and I’ll take what I can get. I’m just hoping that they also rework the video so that it features the two of them doing kinky stuff and a lot less Perez Hilton.



(t5!) score: !!!



(*) I can’t defend the omission of “Rude Boy” from the (t5!) My Year In Lists 2010: Singles!. It was released so early in the year that I plainly forgot about it, which is embarrassing. Looking back now, I would say that it’s definitely in the Top 10.


(**) Rihanna and Britney are #1 and #2, respectively, if we’re only talking about American Top 40 female pop stars. However, if we remove all the irresolute sub-genre barriers so that it includes every pop/R&B/dance female soloist, my list would go: (1) Robyn, (2) Rihanna, (3) Cassie, (4) Ciara, (5) M.I.A., (6) Britney…(second last) Rebecca Black, and (last) Pink.