Rihanna by Sarah Oliver Read Free Book Online

Ne-Yo again and together they wrote ‘Hate That I Love You’. He also penned ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’, ‘Question Existing’ and ‘Take A Bow’ (for Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded ). Ne-Yo gave her some singing lessons, too. She wanted to make sure that her vocals were as good as they could be, and Ne-Yo was certainly up to the challenge of teaching Rihanna. She had a raw ability but didn’t understand some of the things he asked her to do, as she confessed to MTV: ‘He is such a genius. I’ve never had vocal training so when I’m in the studio, he’ll tell me how to breathe and stuff. And I’m like, “What?” Like, he’ll call out these big fancy words: “OK, I want you to do staccato.” And I’m like, “OK, I don’t know what that is.”’
    Good Girl Gone Bad was released in May 2007, while Good Girl Gone Bad : Reloaded was released the following June. The original album was a big success for Rihanna as it sold 162,000 copies in the first week alone, and entered the USmusic charts at No. 2. It also topped the music charts in Europe, UK, Ireland, Canada, Hungary and Poland, and reached No. 2 in Australia and Denmark.
    While writing and recording tracks for the album, Rihanna was constantly listening to Afrodisiac by Brandy. She loved every track on that album – there wasn’t a single one that she didn’t want to listen to over and over again. This made her eager to produce an album that her fans would be able to say exactly the same thing about: she wanted every track to be just as strong as the others.
    Good Girl Gone Bad has a more up-tempo vibe than A Girl Like Me and has more pop tracks on it, without neglecting the R&B and dance elements. Before it came out, Rihanna told MTV: ‘You feel different every album and [at] this stage I feel like I want to do a lot of uptempo [songs]. I want to keep people dancing but still be soulful at the same time.’
    She revealed the new Rihanna to the Star Phoenix: ‘I basically took the attitude of the bad girl and I really got rebellious and just did everything the way I wanted to do it – I didn’t want to listen to anybody, I didn’t consult with anybody. I just want to have a little more fun with my music and be a little more experimental in terms of my image and my sound. I just reinvented myself. It’s all about the attitude that you take toward things. I’m not being careful, I’m just having fun – I’m taking risks because bad girls take risks.’
    The tracks on Good Girl Gone Bad are as follows:

‘Umbrella’ (featuring Jay-Z)
‘Push Up On Me’
‘Don’t Stop the Music’
‘Breakin’ Dishes’
‘Shut Up and Drive’
‘Hate That I Love You’ (featuring Ne-Yo)
‘Say It’
‘Sell Me Candy’
‘Lemme Get That’
‘Rehab’
‘Question Existing’
‘Good Girl Gone Bad’
    On the UK version, ‘Cry’ was added as a bonus track, and for the Japanese version, ‘Haunted’ was added.
    The extra tracks on Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded are:
‘Take A Bow’
‘If I Never See Your Face’ (with Maroon 5)
‘Disturbia’
    The Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded album was accompanied by a DVD documentary of Rihanna performing in Manchester. It was a huge hit with fans and many outlets sold out.
    For the Good Girl Gone Bad album cover art, Rihanna wears a white dress and leans back into the shadows, which gives the impression that she is both good (white dress) and bad (shadows). The image is taken from the side and shelooks slightly downwards at the camera; her arms cross her body, with her hands placed on top of each other. Her name is written in a large green type that runs across the middle of the image, with the title in lower case white text below. The R eloaded version of the album uses the same image but with a green background and her name in red.
    The cover for ‘Umbrella’ has become one of Rihanna’s most iconic covers. It shows her wearing Wellington boots and holding onto her umbrella, which is the wrong way up on the floor. She’s