Rihanna album review: "Loud"

Rihanna Loud cove

Rihanna’s new album "Loud” is an eclectic mix of music; unfortunately its eclectic in a bad way. With so many competing styles going on it ends up being incredibly distracting . It swings from the extremes of the, intentionally drunk, unintentionality terrible, sounding "Cheers" to the piano driven, string laden, "Fading" so clumsily it painful. Not content with the "throw everything at the wall and seen what sticks" style of  album production a few of the songs even have Rihanna sounding like popular singers of the moment just in case that didn't work. The acoustic guitar, adult contemporary “California King Bed” is a song that you'd expect Taylor Swift to be singing, with the difference being she would have arranged and written it better. Where as "Raining Men" will have Beyonce stans going crazy as is it mimics "Diva" so unashamedly that I even blushed for Rihanna. Its not all bad and where Rihanna really shines is when she sticks to music that doesn't try to be someone else

 and follows the fresh dance direction that the first single "Only Girl" led the album.

Conclusion: Extremely dissapointed. "That Chick"-which is strangely ommited- and "Only girl" had me so excited about this album but the album didn't live up to that hype.

Skip: Cheers (Drink To That), California King Bed, Raining Men (feat. Nicki Minaj)

Download: S&M, Raining Men (just for Nicki Minaj's rap), Only Girl (In The World), Skin

Rating: 2.5/5