Shea Serrano[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.]
Song: Rihanna's “We Found Love,” featuring Calvin Harris
History: “We Found Love” is the first single from Rihanna's sixth album, Talk That Talk. It was bad when it was released, then became mildly interesting when the video was debuted because everyone thought they were the only one to notice the parallels between Rihanna's relationship with the guy in the video and her relationship with Chris Brown. Shortly thereafter, everyone remembered, “Oh yeah, that's right, this song stinks.”
Atmospherics: Here, the first 0:50 are made to resemble Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. The last 3:46 are meant to resemble every electro-pop track that's ever been successful. It was produced by Calvin Harris. Harris is kind of famous in Europe for saying that he invented disco but mostly famous because he knows Kylie Minogue. It is synthesized chaos, and Rihanna, talented as she is, is overwhelmed entirely by it. You know the part in The Matrix 2 where Neo fights all of the Agent Smiths? This is like that, except Rihanna hasn't figured out that she can fly away yet.
Scientific Analysis: As loaded with social commentary as it supposedly is, “We Found Love” is structurally hollow. The lyrics are vacant.
To wit, in video form, the song is 270 seconds long, about half of which is Rihanna singing “We found love in a hopeless place.” I thought this possibly inaccurate, so I searched the A-Z Lyrics site to see them written out. This page came up:
In total, there are 206 words in the entire song; 112 belong to the sentence “We found love in a hopeless place.” That's 54 percent, bro. In graph form:
Some other graphs with similar proportions:
Also, an aside for trendy measure: Either the hyper attractive beau in this video has legs and feet that twist around backwards, or Rihanna has just about the most gigantic feet of any would-be devastatingly attractive female singer in history.
They look cheesteak subs. They are bigger than everything else in the shot. If the average bathtub is 60 inches long, that makes her feet, by proportion, about thirteen-inches-long. That's a little too Lamar Odom-y.
Rihanna, more Lamar Odom-y than billed
Who knew?
Conclusions:
(I) Rihanna found love in a place with little to no hope.
(II) Rihanna does not know how to fly.
(III) There is little difference between grown men and 13-year-old boys.
(IV) Rihanna's feet are unnecessarily large.
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