Rude Boy, Up Top

    There's another shift in the Billboard clouds. With "Break Your Heart" taking its leave, a new song has reached apogee:

"Rude Boy" by Rihanna.
    She's no stranger to first chair, and neither is that nasal drone of hers. Obviously the general public eats it up, but I'm not as sold. With the club beats that both "Rude Boy" and "Disturbia" have, its severity gets dimmed (but not completely). Take that away, like on "Unfaithful", and her reedy vocals can really cut the ear full strength.
    So I don't enjoy her singing. Bad crooning doesn't stop good jams though, as some punk bands will prove. My next issue with it seems to be a recurring theme in the business today: repetition. With Rihanna's "want want want"s and "boom boom boom"s and "tonight I'mma let"s, she makes it seem that English grammar necessitates affirming the action by stating it at least three times. The chorus alone reads, "Come here rude boy, boy, can you get it up? / Come here rude boy, boy, is you big enough? / Take it, take it, baby, baby / Take it, take it, love me, love me." I know the big pop numbers are supposed to be easy on the ears and brain in terms of lyrical complexity, but it seems more and more they delve into mediocrity and below. Just because there's only so many ways to say something, it shouldn't be acceptable to simply say the EXACT same thing continuously to either fill up the rhythm or, even worse, song length. There are ways around it, and I long for the days when the chorus wasn't used for a crutch.
    The bar I was at last night helped illustrate why pop songs never stray too far from a certain point. The DJ cut and pasted parts of songs into one giant medley that never played one in full. Even that dreaded "TiK ToK" fit well into the mix, which makes sense because all of these songs were created for dancing. The atmosphere of places like clubs removes that annoyance to repetition. The beat is more or less the same, and you really don't pay much attention to the actual quality of the song so long as its loud enough to drown out thought. I almost wonder if these tunes get so big because the masses come home from some wild night out and associate them with the good time they had, thereby liking it regardless. Whatever the case, I feel that the lyrics could avoid reiteration and still create those thumping club hits. Even if no one would listen to them in the moment.
    One last comment here: The music video is alright, playing off of Jamaican themes. It doesn't really hold a candle against "Disturbia" or "Umbrella" though for uniqueness. Also, Rihanna has this tendency to use awkward facial expressions for certain words or phrases that I guarantee she doesn't really use for singing (in all her videos). An odd tic to notice...