Please (Don't) Stop The Music

Oh Rihanna. Lately it seems as though this girl can do no wrong, in both the charts and style stakes. This year alone she's had countless hit singles, and undergone a drastic hair revamp that has seen baths and sinks across Britain run red with the dye of countless imitators.

Now I love Rhi Rhi as much as the next person. And I don't deny her talent, she isn't the greatest singer to be fair but as a performer and an icon she's up there with the greats. However, I have to question what the heck she was thinking when she decided to release Man Down as her latest single from the album Loud.

Considering the other tracks on the album, it's bewildering that she chose the worst one on it (/possibly on any album of hers EVER) as her next single, a follow up to S&M which, despite its questionable themes and content, was undeniably awesome and ridiculously catchy.

Man Down has glimpses of something good, the dance hall beat could have hit the charts with something relatively fresh and different from the saturation of dubstep and dance. But that's about as far as it goes in my opinion. The lyrics seem faintly ridiculous, as if the writer had an idea but couldn't really be bothered to think it through, so just laid down the first thing that popped into their overpaid little head.

She's also recieved a lot of criticism for the video, which features her gunning a man down in a station who has raped her. To be honest, I don't understand how this is causing so much outrage, considering the content of most of her other videos. They've all been explicitly sexy, even in the early days, and more recently they've become more and more outrageous. It isn't just Rihanna, every artist with sense knows that to make an impact they have to shock. And as time goes on this becomes a much harder thing to do, as audiences are becoming more desensitized by the hour.

I don't see how the violence of Man Down is any worse than S&M, which sees the star cavorting around in bondage gear SINGING ABOUT HOW CHAINS AND WHIPS EXCITE HER. It's right there in the lyrics! Were the rest of the world living under moss covered rocks while this languished in the charts week after week?

Perhaps these parent groups were too busy oggling over Rhianna in the other videos to care too much about the content, but now they've closed their mouths and wiped away the drool they've had a change of heart.

Either way, the song sucks. Do better next time please Rhi, I don't wanna be disappointed at V!