Try Harder: Rihanna

Man, year end lists. Things are going crazy over here. Liz is threatening to just write The Con 10 times. Ben has turned his list in but thinking about finding his music, half of which I've never heard, makes my head hurt.

So I thought I'd turn to the idea of folks who didn't make the cut, but who came close to being on our individual lists, for what I'm dubbing "Try Harder". For me, one of those is Rihanna, and her new Rated R album.

"Umbrella" was a great song, but Rated R is almost a great album. It's dark, vindictive, and honestly ceases to give a fuck about pop music conventions, fusing goth and dubstep and sparse futurism with punkish ferocity. Unfortunately, that only makes up about 2/3 of the album. When Rated R turns to bullshit, like on the last song, shockingly titled "Last Song", it's fucking bad. The good, though, is good enough to drop jaws-"So Hard", the fucking frightening "G4L" (which is the audio equivalent of a pistol whip) and "Fire Bomb".

Rihanna: Fire Bomb

This is a feisty little number that Pink (oh, shit, is it P!nk? Does she still spell her name with fucking punctuation marks?) would have sold any number of "Get This Party Started"'s for, because it's subversive and dark as hell-like the best pop songs. Everything about this song works, from the slightly pinned-back guitars buzzing around to the soaring psychotic chorus, the sort of shit a 16 year old girl would carve into her left thigh in English class: 'I just wanna set you on fire/so I don't have to burn alone".

But, um, Rihanna actually does it, and that's what astounds me-the line "I can't wait to see your face/when your front window breaks....the lovers need to clear the road" is what first stopped me in my tracks and made me realize "um, I think we have a less homicidal, more murder/suicide-ish sister to Beyonce's 'Ring The Alarm' right here".

If only all of the record was this smart...and had this much of a "no longer giving a fuck" death-wish.