Despite the album’s title, there was still an innocence to her that was quite evident on “Umbrella” even though she was trying to convince the world of the opposite. She was a budding rookie bursting onto the scene with an all-star season, essentially. “Umbrella” introduced us to a wide-eyed, hopeful Rihanna. It contains some of the best instrumentation and writing Rihanna has ever experimented with, and its lasting effect is unquestionable. Songs like “Needed Me,” “Sex With Me” and “Desperado” tear through the speakers like an unstoppable force, sparingly slowing down only to coax you out of your hiding spot until the album attacks again.
It’s essentially an album about how you will never be as awesome as she is, and it couldn’t have sounded better. It’s an unrelenting, cocky, empowering, savage piece of music that finds Rihanna at her angriest yet most cohesive point as an artist. The best example of this is in her latest, and arguably best, album ANTI. Yes, it was the first true chapter of her story, but the tale being told through her music back then ended long ago, and Rihanna has become something more in the process. However, what makes “Umbrella” even more important isn’t its relevance to Rihanna today, but in fact how different it sounds compared to her music now. It was the Voltron of pop singles in 2007, and it serves to this day as the true beginning of the Rihanna we have come to love over the last 10 years. Whether it was Tricky Stewart’s live instrument production or Jay-Z’s utterly brilliant timing in both capitalizing on Rihanna’s stardom but also pushing it into the stratosphere, “Umbrella” was the perfect culmination of rap, rock, and pop. What makes “Umbrella” a truly genius work of pop music is its ability to take somewhat cliched material in the lyrics and make it sound original.
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Part of what made “Umbrella” as well as much of Good Girl Gone Bad, was the inclusion of Terius “The-Dream” Nash into the writing process, who clearly was able to hone in Rihanna’s lyrics into something more powerful and entrancing, and one can almost hear The Dream’s signature high-pitched voice demonstrating Rihanna how to hit the notes on the song’s chorus. It was clear she had the vocal chops to carry heavier material, and while her first two albums aren’t necessarily bad per say, it wasn’t until Good Girl Gone Bad that her potential seemed to be tapped into. Songs like “Pon de Replay” and “SOS,” while undoubtedly catchy, served no real purpose on the pop stage, and looking back it makes sense that it took more creative control on Rihanna’s part to finally breakthrough. “Umbrella” was not only one of the biggest songs of the 2000’s decade, but it’s unequivocally the song that marked Rihanna’s transition from rising pop star with average tunes to one of music’s biggest names and most successful artists.īefore “Umbrella,” Rihanna’s music felt reserved and neutered. It’s a bonafide pop classic in every sense of the word.For a short period of time, it was even cool to echo the phrase ”įor a short period of time, it was even cool to echo the phrase “ella, ella, ella, aye, aye, aye…” right after your friends said the word umbrella, or possibly any word ending in “ella” (which may have really sucked for people named Stella in 2007). You would be hard pressed to find a person who doesn’t know the words to “Umbrella,” Rihanna’s lead single from her third studio album Good Girl Gone Bad. Ten years later, we look back on Rihanna’s true breakout hit “Umbrella” and how distant it feels from Rihanna’s music today.
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