Crossing the Border | Rihanna: Talk That Talk

Even though this blog's main focus is independent music and artists, every now and then I'll deviate from my blog's goal to talk about types of music that I'm enjoying on the other side of the music spectrum; music that's been labelled as "top 40's" or "commercial." Crossing the Border is exactly that, music on the other side of the indie wall that despite being popular, is still nevertheless good. This week, I'm discussing a not-so guilty pleasure of mine, Rihanna's newest album, Talk That Talk.

Leave it to Rihanna to seize an opportunity. With most of her female pop peers at a loss to provide new singles for hungry radio listeners, Rihanna strikes with Talk That Talk, her sixth studio album in six years and an album providing enough radio filler to keep the masses happy during this pop music drought.

The first single “We Found Love,” a glitzy, Calvin Harris-produced track, and the album's best song, hardly features Rihanna singing. It's chorus, a bubbling instrumental club beat that bursts with a clash into a island-infused dance riff, makes it clear what Talk That Talk is all about: a haven for producers to strut their stuff. With material from big names like Dr. Luke, StarGate, Cirkut, Bangladesh, and the already-familiar Calvin Harris, Talk is a record tailor-made for producers to shows off their best beats.

Album Review | The Big Pink: Future This

It seemed unlikely that Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell of The Big Pink would fall victim to “the sophomore slump.” Given that the duo's excellent, critically acclaimed debut album, A Brief History of Love was packed with gargantuan choruses and stellar production, Furze and Cordell's second album should've been hard to top, but not impossible given the duo's proven talent. In the Big Pink's second album, Future This, Furze and Cordell disregard what worked well in A Brief History to create an album of inferior quality, something that appears as a cheap imitation of their past work.

On Future, none of Furze and Cordell's hooks explode with the same poignancy or strength as their prior songs. The lyrics of love lost and broken hearts that really resonated with listeners in A Brief History are replaced in Future with lyrics about staying grounded and strong; a positivity that radiates in some of the best stadium rock. However, without the big sound The Big Pink initially created for themselves in their debut, the lyrics sound hackneyed and cliché, preachy rather than inspirational, and even ironic considering it seems the duo lacked their own inspiration when writing these lyrics.