Swift felt a “quiet conclusion” after finishing up evermore, describing that it was more about grappling with endings of all “sizes and shapes,” and the record represented a chapter closing. “Closure” is a “skittering” track that has the same energy as tracks like Lover’s “I Forgot That You Existed,” whereas the ballad “champagne problems” is thematically reminiscent of Swift’s Speak Now track “Back To December” where she takes responsibility for her lover’s heartache. Folklore’s impact on the zeitgeist at a time where everyone was stuck at home helped shape people’s quarantine experience. She worked remotely with two producers — again working with her right-hand man Jack Antonoff, and first-time collaborator Aaron Dessner from The National.
She formed a girl group with two classmates; when they were 15 years old, they scored an audition with music producer Evan Rodgers, who was visiting the island with his Barbadian wife. She is also a businesswoman who owns multiple ventures, including the popular cosmetics line Fenty Beauty and the lingerie brand Savage X Fenty. For her work on the single, Rihanna received her first Academy Award nomination, for best original song. Rihanna began working on a new record, but the project was delayed as she took a break from music.
Life and career
Following the success with folklore and evermore, Swift’s intrigue was at a then-all-time high upon the release of Midnights. Although the album is a departure from the two pandemic sister albums, the overall creation process didn’t differ too much. On Midnights, Swift leaves behind indie folk sounds and returns to the pop production of 1989 and Lover. After coming out of the folklorian woods following folklore and evermore, fans and critics alike were intrigued to see what direction Swift would take on her next studio album. Even so, its poetic lyricism and mystical storytelling cleverly foreshadowed what was to come with subsequent albums, particularly The Tortured Poets Department.
- Swift also found a new sense of creativity within this new mindset, one where she aimed to still embed playful themes in her songwriting but with less snark than that of “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do.” Leaning into Lover being a “love letter to love,” Swift explored every aspect of it.
- Throughout a total of 31 tracks, the prolific songwriter shelved the glittery pop radio-friendly tunes in favor of more subdued, synthy and heart-wrenching songs.
- And even despite matching the 1.2 million first-week sales of her previous releases, some concluded that the album was her first commercial failure when compared to 1989.
- She recalled performing Carey’s 1993 song “Hero” at her high school talent show.
- Now that the curtain is up and The Life of a Showgirl is out, read on for five key essential insights from Taylor Swift’s new album.
- Although Swift said that the album has its vindictive moments — even declaring that the “old Taylor” is dead on the bridge of “Look What You Made Me Do” — it’s a vulnerable record for her.
She didn’t want to be just “another girl singer” and knew writing her own songs would be what set her apart. Every album era has seen Swift reinvent herself over and over, which has helped pave the way for artists to explore other musical avenues. A once-in-a-lifetime generational storyteller, one could argue that she is music’s modern-day maverick, constantly evolving both her music and the culture around her. Sadly not a tribute to the classic ’60s sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Bewitched is instead a self-described “love album” that helped Laufey surpass Björk and Sigur Ros as Iceland’s most streamed artist.
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In contrast to the fairytale motifs and happy endings of Fearless, evermore saw Swift become fixated on “unhappy” endings — stories of failed marriages (“happiness”), lifeless relationships (“tolerate it”), and one-time flings (“’tis the damn season”). Like its (literally) folklorian sister, evermore was a surprise release at the end of 2020, marking the first time Swift didn’t have distinct “eras” between albums. It was exciting enough for Swifties to experience one surprise album drop from Swift, an artist who typically has an entire album campaign calculated. At the 2021 GRAMMYs, folklore took home Album Of The Year, making her the fourth artist in history to win three times in the Category. After its release, folklore became the best-selling album of 2020 after selling 1.2 million records. Lover became Swift’s sixth No. 1 album in America, making her the first female artist to achieve the feat.
- In Barbados, Rihanna drew early inspiration from reggae, soca, and hip-hop, and after relocating to the US, she was introduced to a wider variety of genres, including rock.
- The 12-track record is an amalgamation of what was going on behind the scenes throughout the latter half of The Eras Tour.
- Rihanna released her debut album, Music of the Sun, in August 2005.
- It also spawned the popular radio hits “Needed Me” and “Love on the Brain.”
- To celebrate Taylor Swift’s newest era with The Life of a Showgirl, GRAMMY.com looks back on all of her albums (Taylor’s Versions not included) and how each era shaped her remarkable career.
- To promote the album, Rihanna embarked on the 777 Tour, performing seven shows in seven countries over the course of seven days.
- “Wood” is Swift taking cues from fellow showgirl Carpenter, winking at listeners as she weaves as many innuendos about the word as possible.
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The two officially dated again for a time, with Rihanna maintaining in a Rolling Stone interview that Brown had changed and that any form of abuse would be unacceptable. In 2009, Rihanna was the center of a media firestorm after a domestic violence incident in which her then-boyfriend Chris Brown assaulted her before an awards show. Prior to that, she was in an on-again-off-again romance with longtime collaborator Drake for more than 7 years, starting in 2009. Most notably, she owns the popular cosmetics line Fenty Beauty, which she launched in 2017.
Production country
In June 2016, Rihanna released “Sledgehammer” as part of the film soundtrack for Star Trek Beyond. Announced in November 2015, the Anti World Tour was launched in March 2016 in support of the album. In late 2015, Rihanna signed a $25 million deal with Samsung to promote its Galaxy product line, with the company also sponsoring the rollout of her eighth studio album, titled Anti, and its accompanying tour.
On “Father Figure,” she flips the power dynamic between a “showman,” someone who thought they were pulling the strings, and a showgirl. On stage, fans were seeing the same steadfast, resilient showgirl they were seeing throughout the tour perform three-hour sets. After The Tortured Poets Department provided insight into how she coped during the beginning of the tour while dealing with two relationships breaking down, producing tracks like “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and “loml,” The Life of a Showgirl is a sharp turn in the other betista casino direction. The 12-track record is an amalgamation of what was going on behind the scenes throughout the latter half of The Eras Tour. Take a look at how tracks like “The Fate of Ophelia” and “The Life of a Showgirl” hint that Swift is happier and more inspired than ever.
The line debuted in a Paris pop-up on May 22 before a worldwide online release seven days later, featuring clothing, accessories, and footwear. It included an array of products including foundations, highlighters, bronzers, blush compacts, lip glosses, and blotting sheets, and was praised for offering shades that catered to all skin tones. The $10 million partnership produced a wide range of beauty products, with the first collection released on September 8, 2017, in stores and online across more than 150 countries. Over the next two years, she released a variety of footwear in different styles and colourways, all receiving positive responses from critics and consumers alike. Rihanna went on to collaborate with numerous fashion houses, including Dior, Stance, and Manolo Blahnik. She also established a photography agency, A Dog Ate My Homework, representing photographers Erik Asla and Deborah Anderson.
In 2014, Shakira featured Rihanna on her single “Can’t Remember to Forget You”. In December 2013, she topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart with a feature on Eminem’s song “The Monster”. Rihanna made a cameo in the comedy film This Is the End (2013), and later collaborated with rapper Wale on his remix of the single “Bad”. To promote the album, Rihanna embarked on the 777 Tour, performing seven shows in seven countries over the course of seven days. In September 2012, the music video for “We Found Love” won Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards, making Rihanna the first woman to receive the honour more than once. In March, Rihanna and Brown released two remixes—her track “Birthday Cake” and his “Turn Up the Music”—which were criticized due to their history of domestic violence.
Rolling Stone included her single “Umbrella” in its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” and her album Anti amongst the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. She is the UK’s third best-selling female artist of the 21st century, having sold seven million albums. In August 2018, Billboard ranked Rihanna as the tenth-most successful Hot 100 artist of all time and it also named her the top Hot 100 artist of the 2010s. She has accumulated numerous awards and honours, including nine Grammy Awards, twelve Billboard Music Awards, and thirteen American Music Awards.
In 2016, it was confirmed that Rihanna would release her music through her own label, Westbury Road Entertainment, founded in 2005 and named after her childhood home in Barbados. Including Beyoncé and Jay-Z, 16 artist stakeholders co-own Tidal, most of whom own a 3% equity stake. He highlighted her multifaceted career, “from her business achievements through Fenty to her tremendous record as an activist and philanthropist”.
A pop and reggae album, A Girl Like Me peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 chart, with 115,000 copies sold in the US in its first week. Impressed, Rogers arranged a second meeting with Rihanna and her mother—this time without the other two girls—and later invited them to his hometown in Connecticut to record demo tapes for record label submissions. Around this time, Rihanna began listening to reggae artists such as Sizzla and Damien Marley, as well as R&B musicians like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. She is the highest-certified female digital single artist by the Recording Industry Association of America, and has seven diamond-certified singles and fourteen number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. These albums contained the US number-one singles “Rude Boy”, “Only Girl (In the World)”, “What’s My Name?”, “S&M”, “We Found Love”, “Diamonds”, and “Work”. The albums spawned the singles “Pon de Replay” and “SOS”, which peaked at numbers two and one on the US Billboard Hot 100, respectively.
She first gained prominence in 2005 with her debut album “Music of the Sun,” which quickly established her as a force in the music industry. Known for her unique style and chart-topping hits, she has influenced music and fashion worldwide. She told Winfrey that Brown may have been the love of her life and she has developed “a very close friendship” with him. The pair worked together on the song “Birthday Cake,” released that year.
The record also featured the popular power ballad “Unfaithful,” as well as singles “We Ride” and “Break It Off.” The album debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart and earned her first No. 1 hit with the catchy pop single “SOS,” which spent three weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100. In 2008, Rihanna topped the chart three times, twice with her own songs “Disturbia” and “Take a Bow,” plus a feature on T.I.’s “Live Your Life.” She has also earned nine number-one songs on the UK Singles Chart and ranks second to the Beatles for the most million-selling singles in the country. This made her the artist with the most digital single awards and the first performer to exceed RIAA’s 100 million cumulative singles certification threshold. With estimated worldwide sales exceeding 250 million records as of 2023, Rihanna is one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
Retrospective and reflective, Speak Now is an album about the speeches she could’ve, would’ve and should’ve said. The album’s title track pulled from the saying, “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” inspired by a friend’s ex-boyfriend getting engaged; meanwhile, “Mean” was everything Swift wanted to say to a critic who was continuously harsh about her vocals. Along with having more eyes on her, Swift also felt pressured to maintain her persona as a perfect young female role model amid a time when her peers like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato were attempting to rebrand to be more mature and sexier. But this meant that she faced more publicity and criticism, from naysayers who nitpicked her songwriting and vocals to the infamous Kanye West incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Rihanna has delivered pop hit after pop hit since bursting onto the music scene in the mid-2000s. The album’s lead single, “Work,” featuring rapper Drake, spent nine weeks at No. 1 and earned two Grammy nominations. In January 2016, Rihanna released her eighth album, Anti, allowing Jay-Z’s online streaming site Tidal to exclusively feature the collection of tracks for a week. The album included “We Found Love,” a track with DJ Calvin Harris that won the 2013 Grammy Award for best short-form music video. Less than a year later, when Rihanna was only 16 years old, she left Barbados to move in with Rogers and his wife in Connecticut and work on recording a demo album.
After exploring pop-leaning sonics she first found with Red, Swift worked with Martin and Shellback again on most of 1989. 1989 was lauded by critics for its infectious synth-pop that was reminiscent of the 1980s, yet still had a contemporary sound. She plays with time — speeding it up in “Starlight,” dabbling in the past in “All Too Well,” and reframing it in “State of Grace” — to better understand her experiences. In her liner notes, she references Pablo Neruda’s poem “Tonight I Can Write,” stating that “Love is so short, forgetting is so long” is the overarching theme for the album. From addressing the aforementioned VMA incident in the forgiving “Innocent” to a toxic relationship in “Dear John,” Speak Now also hinted that her rose-colored glasses were cracked, but Swift (and her songwriting) was only becoming stronger because of it.
