Like Madonna before her, Rihanna possesses a shrewd ability to sniff out percolating trends and a willingness to zig when she’s expected to zag. “Russian Roulette,” “Diamonds,” and “Four Five Seconds” were all surprising moves for an artist who could have safely preserved her own status quo.
The Barbadian singer’s wild success, which includes 11 #1 hits in the U.S. as a lead artist, can also be attributed to her seemingly steadfast work ethic, yielding seven albums in just the first eight years of her career. That streak ended with 2012’s Unapologetic, and she’s only dropped one album since then, 2016’s Anti.
Though there’s still no new album on the horizon, Rihanna recently contributed two original songs, “Lift Me Up” and “Born Again,” to the soundtrack to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She’s also poised to take the stage at this Sunday’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. To celebrate, we took a look back through Rihanna’s catalog of hits and picked her 20 best singles to date. Alexa Camp
Editor’s Note: Listen to our Rihanna playlist on Spotify.
20. “Four Five Seconds”
The reverberations of a “ella-ella” or “na-na” now feel something like a big bang: There would be no “We Can’t Stop,” no “Come & Get It,” without the syllabic tongue games Rihanna used to galvanize pop in the latter half of the aughts. Of course, hashtagging your way through vocals only gets a career so far, and if “Stay” saw RiRi try to demonstrate greater range through familiar forms, “Four Five Seconds” does so the way she knows best: by inventing her own. Paired with Kanye West in his rough crooner mode, the two bleat bluesy woes over Paul McCartney’s best Lindsey Buckingham impression. It’s an oddly affecting formula that’s unlikely to prove quite so imitable—though Miley and Selena are welcome to try. Sam C. Mac
19. “S&M”
To say the world wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear Rihanna, after just having bared her soul in Rated R about (among other things) “that incident,” singing about how much chains and whips excite her would be a gross understatement. Career momentum, and a little assist from Britney Spears on the remix, thrust “S&M” to the top of the charts anyway, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many admitting that they, too, like the smell of sex in the air. But screw it, we’ll say it. “S&M” might be the boldest of all Rihanna house jams, the moment when she truly found her Janet Jackson-circa-“Throb” stride. Eric Henderson
18. “Man Down”
Rihanna’s follow-up to Anti will reportedly be more reggae-influenced than any of her previous efforts. Of course, the singer has already paid homage to her roots countless times over the course of her career. One highlight is “Man Down,” about a woman who shoots a man in the public square, putting a feminine twist on Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff.” Rihanna’s vocals are surprisingly agile, and “Man Down” is one of her most confident performances to date. Camp
17. “Rehab”
If “Umbrella” was a good girl’s gesture of generosity, “Rehab” is her reeling from the abuse of a bad man who squandered it. “I’ll never give myself to another the way I gave it to you” is one of the saddest Rihanna lyrics, but a blow blunted by the singer’s signature resigned delivery, deployed here as a coping mechanism. What might be a typical lovelorn ballad becomes tough and resilient, a tone well complemented by Timbaland snapping percussion and dramatic strings, and the anonymity Rihanna had been criticized for suddenly matures into a mode of vocalizing repressed emotion that she’d never before explored. It only took a crummy metaphor to get her there. Mac
16. “Disturbia”
With its thrumming EDM production, devilishly catchy hook, and a music video layered with ostentatiously macabre costumes and set pieces, “Disturbia” all but provided the model for the event-single strategy Lady Gaga consistently relied on at her peak. Along with the more obvious reading of the singer’s struggle with her inner demons, there’s also a sly joke at the expense of the censors, literalizing their unfounded fears about “immoral” sexualized pop music by turning them into a cartoon grotesquery. That the track was written by Chris Brown can only spoil the joke so much. Mac
15. “Shut Up and Drive”
It borrows liberally from New Order’s “Blue Monday,” and features a break that sounds reminiscent of “Planet Rock.” With that electric guitar riff and that title, you’d think “Shut Up and Drive” would come harder than, well, “Hard.” But this song ain’t no drag race against Grace Jones’s “Sex Drive.” It’s more like a Sunday-afternoon trip to the candy shop, hanging out the passenger side of Barbie’s pink convertible with Jem and the Holograms in the tape deck. And you know what? That’s all it needed to be. Henderson
14. “Hard”
Merging hip-hop and rock wasn’t exactly a groundbreaking proposition in 2009, but “Hard” further cemented Rihanna’s reputation as pop’s premier genre-hopper. Created by the same team behind the singer’s smash “Umbrella,” the track seemed, at the time, like a bit of a retread, primarily due to its repetitive, monosyllabic hook. But while it’s only a minor hit in Rihanna’s catalogue, “Hard” is, per its title, an unrelenting declaration of power. Camp
13. “What’s My Name?”
The first in a lengthy string of collaborations between Rihanna and Drake, 2010’s “What’s My Name?” is a sleek midtempo banger that pairs dreamy synths, swirling 808 snares, and subtle dancehall influences. Drake comes on strong right out of the gate, and Rihanna doesn’t miss a beat, countering the Canadian rapper’s geeky pickups with equal parts confidence and poise. Camp
12. “Where Have You Been”
It’s telling that “Where Have You Been” omits the implied question mark in its title. Rihanna isn’t so much asking as she is witnessing her own solitude. Like on “We Found Love,” she’s almost incidental to the song, repeating the same verse and refrain while Calvin Harris’s long instrumental passages comprise the most ecstatic parts of the track. The synth-happy chorus, in which Rihanna repeats the titular rhetorical question over and over, builds to a dubstep rave-up that’s connected by the track’s single most rapturous element: a drum fill that lasts no more than a mere second. Sal Cinquemani
11. “Stay”
“Stay” silenced any skeptics convinced that Rihanna used big beats and quick tempos to hide her shaky instrument. Not even qualifying as a “power ballad,” “Stay” is a slow, patient, plaintive showcase for Ri’s capacity to sell subtlety: “Funny you’re the broken one, but I’m the only one who needed saving.” And, backed by nothing more than a piano and vocals from Mikky Ekko, she nails it. Henderson
10. “Russian Roulette”
Rihanna daringly followed up her blockbuster Good Girl Gone Bad album with the morbid rock ballad “Russian Roulette.” Opening with a searing electric guitar riff, the track plods along to a spare beat that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Massive Attack album, and, true to its title and theme of chance, the sounds of a rolling dice and the spinning of a gun chamber. The song’s lyrics, which seem to suggest a lovers’ suicide pact, are too opaque to be applied directly to the singer’s violent relationship with her on-and-off-again boyfriend, Chris Brown, but allusions to being “terrified” and the vague admission that “it’s too late to think of the value of my life” only add an even more unsettling undertone to the most ominous song in Rihanna’s catalogue of hits. Cinquemani
9. “Pon De Replay”
Caribbean music has been plundered for the pop masses for decades, while pleas for DJs to spin one’s favorite record has become a tired lyrical theme for a club song. And yet Rihanna’s debut single, “Pon De Replay” (broken English for “Put my song on replay”), felt—and still feels, a decade on—urgent and fresh. Its dancehall rhythm, sneaker-throbbing bass, and pitched-down sample from Quincy Jones’s vintage Ironside theme song—which was used in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films a year or two earlier—render the track ripe for multiple replays. Cinquemani
8. “Love on the Brain”
No one would ever confuse Rihanna with Amy Winehouse, but the doo-wop-inspired fourth single from Anti channels the late singer’s brand of throwback pop with its juxtaposition of retro instrumentation and, one might say, retrograde lyrics: “It beats me black and blue, but it fucks me so good that I can’t get enough.” Rihanna shows off her vocal versatility throughout the track, at turns cooing in falsetto and dropping to a growl, as she unabashedly puts her heart—and her brain—on her sleeve. Cinquemani
7. “SOS”
Deftly using Soft Cell’s 1982 hit “Tainted Love”—itself a revision of Diana Ross and the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go”—as a bleepy backdrop and adding a full-bodied bottom to the original tinny mod-rock track, Rihanna’s “SOS” was one of the few uptempo dance songs to cut through the morass of hip-hop-drenched pop music that dominated the early-to-mid aughts. But while it provided hard, throbbing evidence that dance wasn’t totally dead, it also proved Rihanna was more than just another one-hit wonder, setting the stage for the impressive streak of enduring club hits that populate much of this list. Cinquemani
6. “Work”
“Work” is an understated midtempo jam featuring a percolating beat, sinuous synth lines, and vocal samples stretched and pulled ways that recall Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s masterful production work on Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope. Rihanna’s vocals are a mix of slurs and patois that renders the lyrics of the verses nearly indecipherable—“If I got right then you might not like it/You know I dealt with you the nicest”—but the track, which features a verse by frequent collaborator Drake, is ultimately all about the groove. Camp
5. “Diamonds”
You can tell a lot about a song by how people move to it. In Celine Sciamma’s Girlhood, three free-spirited young black women welcome a fourth to their fold with an intimate lip-sync routine-cum-initiation ceremony set to “Diamonds,” Rihanna’s most recent chart-topper and a culmination of sorts. Writhing in the half-light of their hotel room, the teens celebrate a shared understanding of each other, juking to the song’s dancehall riddim and acting out the extroverted melodrama of the lyrics. What emerges is the impression that this is Rihanna’s most interpersonally accommodating single of the post-Chris Brown years. After spending much of that time writing anthems to her own damaged self-esteem, this one puts others’ first: “Shine bright, you and I.” Mac
4. “Don’t Stop the Music”
Like 2006’s SOS,” the following year’s “Don’t Stop the Music” was based around a sample from a 1982 track (in this case, Michael Jackson’s Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”) whose hook was based on another song (Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makoosa”). Dance music’s aphrodisiacal potency has been well-documented (most comprehensively in dance music, naturally), but Rihanna’s tribute to the groove, in which she embarks on a quest to find a “possible candidate” with the aid of Dibango’s carnal African siren song, possesses the urgency that comes with the realization that every dance floor eventually empties out. Cinquemani
3. “Only Girl (In the World)”
Rihanna and house music were, by this point in her career, fast besties, as were Rihanna and the top slot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Everything about “Only Girl (In the World),” her seventh #1 hit, feels like the biggest prom coronation ever. When those peppy, percolating beats that open the track eventually give way to Stargate’s soaring chorus, it’s almost impossible not to step aside to allow her hubris to pass by. The song earned Rihanna her first (and, to date, only) win in Grammy’s Best Dance Recording category, against an extraordinarily pride fest-friendly slate. And it served up one of Rupaul’s Drag Race’s most memorable lip syncs when Monica Beverly Hillz, having just admitted to the judges’ panel that she was transgender, ate each and every word of the song for breakfast. Henderson
2. “Umbrella”
Not to slight Jay Z’s terse storytelling or brilliant Ice-T quotation, but without Rick Rubin’s body-slamming riffs and breakbeats, Hova’s cop-impression shtick might come off less revolutionary than novel. Likewise, if they weren’t called on to parry an onslaught of crashing cymbals and sizzling synthesizers, Rihanna’s “ays” and “ellas” might not have so completely assimilated themselves into the lexicon of millennial pop. When people whine about Rihanna’s superstardom being achieved without displaying any real personality, this is usually exhibit A, devoid of even the regional flair of “Pon De Replay” or the playful sensuality of “SOS,” but blankness is its own presence, and if this track was so surefire without it, how come Britney Spears and Taio Cruz both passed? Sometimes the path to pop’s stratosphere is just knowing which vessel to board. Mac
1. “We Found Love”
Announcing itself with a set of syncopated synth intervals that sound as much like a fire alarm as they do a call to the dance floor, “We Found Love”—more than any other song in Rihanna’s fun-demanding catalogue—makes the urge to get turnt up feel like an almost religious impulse. (Hell, even the most devout parishioners throw their hands up for this secular party hymn.) For understandable reasons, the title cuts off right before the qualifier “in a hopeless place.” But it’s the juxtaposition of the two (emphasized in the VMA-winning music video) that makes Rihanna’s best-selling digital single ever a fully shaded descendent of “The Pleasure Principle.” Henderson
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