Its second single, «If It’s Lovin’ That You Want», peaked at number 36 in the US. After Rihanna signed with Def Jam, Jay-Z and his team spent three months completing her debut studio album. She waited in Jay-Z’s office while lawyers finalized a six-album contract with Def Jam. In early 2005, she performed in New York City for Jay-Z and music executive Antonio «L.A.» Reid, singing Whitney Houston’s «For the Love of You» along with demo tracks «Pon de Replay» and «The Last Time».
The lead single, «Work», topped the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, with the third and fourth singles, «Needed Me» and «Love on the Brain», peaking within the top ten. With an eclectic blend of genres such as pop, dancehall, and psychedelic soul, Anti peaked at number one on the Billboard 200, marking her second chart-topping record in the US. It spent ten non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making it both Rihanna’s longest-running chart-topping single and the longest-running number one song in the US in 2011. To support the album, Rihanna launched the Loud Tour in June 2011, which included a record-breaking ten sold-out shows at The O2 Arena in London—the most by a female artist in the venue’s history.
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.
Swift’s now-frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff credits her as the first person to take a chance on him as a producer with «I Wish You Would» and «Out Of The Woods»; both tracks exemplified how future Antonoff-produced songs would sound on albums like reputation, Lover and Midnights. The night Red lost the GRAMMY for Album Of The Year in 2014, Swift decided that her next album would be a full-on pop record. Commercially, Red debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold 1.2 million copies in its first week, becoming the fastest-selling country album and making Swift the first female artist to have three consecutive albums spend six or more weeks at the top of the chart. Following the more country-influenced Speak Now, some critics and fans found the pop songs on Red were too pop and the lyrics were too repetitive, possibly indicating that she might be selling out.
Only eight months later, in August 2005, she released her first single, “Pon de Replay,” a reggae-influenced club track that reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart and announced Rihanna as the next up-and-coming pop star. Rihanna soon followed with the album A Girl Like Me (2006), featuring the up-tempo club-oriented “S.O.S.” The song, which was built around a sample of Soft Cell’s 1981 new-wave hit “Tainted Love,” became Rihanna’s first to top the Billboard singles chart. Rihanna has fourteen number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, placing her third for the most chart-topping songs in its history. The songs «Man Down», «California King Bed», and «Cheers (Drink to That)» were released as singles from Loud in 2011. The project yielded a string of successful songs, including the US number-one singles «Umbrella», «Take a Bow», and «Disturbia».
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 scored another No. 1 hit with the single “Rude Boy,” while the tracks “Hard” and “Russian Roulette” landed squarely in the top 10. Good Girl Gone Bad remains her best-selling album with over 10 million copies sold worldwide. Her lead single “Umbrella,” featuring Jay-Z, lead the Billboard Hot 100 for a whopping seven weeks and later won the Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration in 2008. Her sophomore effort, A Girl Like Me, followed in April 2006, incorporating reggae, rock, and pop influences.
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».
Many of her music videos were shot as short films exploring issues such as love triangles, abuse and substance abuse romance, including «We Found Love» and «Man Down». The album’s lead single, «Diamonds», topped the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming Rihanna’s twelfth number-one song on the chart. A synth-pop record with EDM and hip-hop elements, Unapologetic debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 238,000 copies, becoming Rihanna’s first chart-topping album in the US. Rihanna is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 250 million records. «She continued to make incredible art and so this is a love song kind of through the lens of the motif of what she had to go through in her life and sort of the parallels that I feel in my own life.»
Her musical career has been marked by experimentation, and she has stated that her goal was «to make music that could be heard in parts of the world that I’d never been to». She began vocal training during the recording of Good Girl Gone Bad (2007) under the guidance of Ne-Yo, who taught her breathing techniques and vocal delivery. The song earned her nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Song. Alongside Donald Glover, she starred in the film Guava Island (2019), in which she played his character’s love interest.
On the Life of a Showgirl track directly named after the late icon, Swift circles back to the themes she touched on with folklore’s «Peace» and the tension between her private reality and her public persona. While half of The Life of a Showgirl’s 12 tracks peer into the darker corners of fame and explores the loneliness, scrutiny and fractures that used to come with it, the other half are dedicated to falling completely head over heels. And on The Tortured Poets Department’s «The Prophecy,» she pleaded for someone to change what she believed to be her predestined future of being alone and what she’d give up to find someone she loves.
But if you want to add a bit of prestige to your supernatural soundtrack, there’s another list of Halloween-friendly songs to check out — one that highlights another celebrated annual occasion. With Halloween celebrations in full swing this Oct. 31, revisit some eerie or ghoulishly titled songs that have been awarded golden gramophones, from the ‘Exorcist’ theme to Eminem and Rihanna’s «The Monster.» More than 40 years later, she’s still happy to discuss and play that single she recorded back in Kingston as a young woman.
She’d see visceral images in her mind — from battleships to tree swings to mirrored disco balls — and turned them into stories, sometimes weaving in her own personal narrative throughout, or taking on a narrator role and speaking from the perspective of someone she had never met. Crafting a world with characters like the folklore love triangle between those in «betty» and «august,» as well as Rebekah Harkness from «the last great american dynasty» (who once lived in Swift’s Rhode Island mansion), was Swift’s way of venturing outside her typical autobiographical style of writing. Without exactly setting out to create an album, she began dreaming of fictional stories and characters with various narrative arcs, allowing her imagination to run free. But Lover was more than any accolades could reflect — it was Swift’s transitional album in many ways, notably marking the first album that she owned entirely herself following leaving Big Machine Records for Republic Records in 2018. This evolution is mentioned throughout Lover, particularly in a direct callback to 2012’s Red, «Daylight,» which sees her describe her love as «golden» rather than «burning red.»
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.
Her debut album, «Music of the Sun,» further solidified her presence, selling over two million copies worldwide and setting the stage for her meteoric rise in the years to come. Jay-Z was immediately captivated, signing her on the spot and launching her career in the music industry. Her journey from a small island to the bustling music scene of America marked the beginning of her transformational career. Relocating from her home in Barbados to Connecticut, she stayed with music producer Evan Rogers and his wife.
“If you listen to the lyrics to that song, you know the depth and how far she’s come.” “The minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn’t exist,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2007. The post featured a photo of Rihanna holding her new daughter, Rocki Irish Mayers, who was born on September 13. Rihanna is a Grammy-winning singer known for such No. 1 pop hits as “Umbrella,” “SOS,” “Diamonds,” and “Work.” In 2023 Rihanna revealed she was again pregnant by performing at the Super Bowl halftime show with a visible baby bump; her representatives subsequently confirmed that the singer was expecting her second child. Rihanna’s personal life attracted intense media attention.
And yet, she has still come out the other side, sparkling, self-assured and ready to revel in a career built on resilience and reinvention — something only a true showgirl could achieve. When she announced the album, she declared, «And baby, that’s showbiz for you.» No one knows that better than someone who has been through the ringer in the industry like Swift has. What is most apparent on the album, though, is just how much Swift embraces every aspect of who she is.
Lead single «We Found Love» is undeniably the biggest hit to stem from the Talk That Talk era, spending 10 consecutive weeks atop the Hot 100. Her longing continues in «Where Have You Been,» which flaunts Rihanna’s versatility, flipping Geoff Mack’s 1959 country song «I’ve Been Everywhere» into an infectious EDM banger. It was especially refreshing to see Rihanna emerge from one of the darkest periods of her life as exuberant as ever.
Off stage, though, she was falling in love again — this time with someone who championed her just as much as the fans did in the areas. It’s apt that she would turn to Max Martin and Shellback, her 1989 and reputation collaborators, to bring that same captivating pop soundscape to The Life of a Showgirl and to capture some of the energy Swift was experiencing. And after two decades in the business, the 14-time GRAMMY winner is giving everyone a glimpse of what she describes as «the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic» chapter of her life thus far.
In addition to her betista casino film roles, Rihanna made notable television appearances, including recurring parts in the psychological thriller series «Bates Motel» in 2017. This hit catapulted her to international fame, earning her first Grammy Award and redefined her image as a confident and edgy artist. Rihanna, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988, in Barbados, swiftly ascended to global stardom after signing with Def Jam Records at just 16.
