Rihanna – Loud | Album Review



Rihanna and her bad self are back with her red hair, getting all Loud. To be honest, I’d rather she was quiet. I quite liked Rihanna when she first hit the scene, but gradually, she has done more and more musically to annoy me and, at times, I feel like she has it in for me. This album picks up where she left off.

I found this album on the whole extremely boring and predictable. It is made up of tracks that sound like Lady Gaga rejects and makes me wonder what happened to Rihanna being her own distinctive artist. There was a moment in Pop when everyone was trying to be her and it now seems she is trying to be everyone but her.

‘S&M’ sounds like a cheap Lady Gaga rip off and the awkward sounding ‘Raining Men’ featuring Nicki Minaj sounds like it’s trying too hard to be Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies.’ I’m not quite sure who she is trying to be on the faux Reggae track ‘Man Down,’ but she’s back to talking about shooting people again.

What’s My Name’ features Drake and sounds more like a typical Rihanna track, however the first commandment of 2010 states: a Drake feature doth not a good track make.

After the monotonous ‘Cheers (Drink To That)’ and ‘Fading,’ ‘Only Girl (In The World)’ is a relatively welcome guest to my speakers, however not to my head, as I had the chorus stuck in it for the remainder of the day. A guilty pleasure in the making methinks.

This is a much, more dance orientated album than her last, and even though I wasn’t particularly fond of her last album too much, I’d take it over this one any day. ‘Skin’ and ‘California King Bed’ veer slightly away from the pop/dance sound, however they both washed over me and lacked any sort of strength. ‘Complicated’ is in much the same vain and sounds like computer game music at best.

‘Love The Way You Lie (Part II)’ featuring Eminem is a different slant on the original and not just a standard boring remix, even bringing in new sounds and song structure. I’m still not a huge fan of this seemingly new attempt at remixing the concept of remixes as it seems too contrived and a little too much like a marketing ploy to cash in on hugely successful songs (see also ‘Empire State of Mind Part II).

Not a great offering by Rihanna, who I feel needs to step up her game and come with something new instead of chasing the pack. Looking back to her previous Good Girl Gone Bad LP, there were tons of songs that were good singles on that album, so I feel it is definitely in her to produce a better album than this.

Loud is out now via Def Jam. Available from iTunes UK / US; Amazon UK / US.