Coldplay x Rihanna

I'm a pretty big fan of Coldplay and a much, much bigger fan of Rihanna so when I found out that they will have a collaboration on the band's new album, I was more than excited.

To date, Rihanna is the one and only artist to be featured on a Coldplay album. Frontman Chris Martin even said, "Rihanna was the only name on the list. It's the only duet we've done and the only one we wanted to do."

Coldplay feat. Rihanna - Princess of China



Aside from "Princess of China," I've been listening a lot to Rihanna's new song "We Found Love." It was released several weeks ago but the music video only premiered a little over a week ago. I already love the song as it is but the treatment for the video gave it a whole other meaning.

Bookstore Chronicles

I'm sure I've told you more than once before how much I love spending my time at Booksale, whether buying or just browsing books and/or magazines. Today I was able to buy two Rihanna magazine covers (Vogue and Cosmo). I picked up a couple of books as well but decided against buying them since I still have several books left untouched on my bookshelf. I didn't really feel bad walking out of the store without them, though, since I had in my hands what I wanted. (I've been waiting for Rihanna's Vogue cover for months now, and finding her Cosmo issue was just a bonus - I don't really read Cosmo but because Rihanna's face was on the cover, I just had to buy it.)

It was a good purchase, actually, the Vogue mag. I first grabbed a copy that was priced at P165 but then I found another copy that was cheaper, the tag said P95 only, that's P70 off! You just have to be patient to go through all of the magazines and you might just score a pretty nice deal like I did. And that goes for the books, too!

Some other thing made me feel bad about another purchase, though. Weeks ago, I bought "The Mermaid Chair" (Sue Monk Kidd) at Booksale for P115. And today, there was a stall selling buy one-take one books for only P99. Guess what book I found sitting on one of the shelves? Yes, The Mermaid Chair. And what bothered me was that I could've gotten "The Inheritance of Loss" (it was on the buy one-take one shelf as well) with it as well for less than what I had paid for at Booksale. Oh, well.

What's the lesson here? It's simple: Good things come to those who wait. And I believe it applies to more important matters, too, so just keep that in mind.

Proud Rihanna Navy

The Grammys this year was a flop. Well, not totally, but it wasn't that much entertaining for me and my friends. The only interesting things were Rihanna's performances, yes, she performed twice. And her winning a Grammy for Best Dance Recording with Only Girl (In The World), which was actually announced in the pre-telecast so there was no acceptance speech. I was really rooting for Love The Way You Lie (and I'm pretty sure I wasn't alone on this) to at least win in one or two categories it was nominated in but alas, I was only disappointed. But Eminem won in the Rap Album category though for his top-selling album, Recovery. He even thanked Rihanna for "helping to propel the album to where it's at now."

Yup, that's my girl. So despite this year's show flubs, I'm still happy with the outcome. Rihanna gained another Grammy to put under her belt and she killed it with her performances on the show together with Eminem and Drake. Watch the videos below.

Eminem & Rihanna with Adam Levine - Love The Way You Lie (Part II)

Rihanna & Drake - What's My Name

Love The Way You Lie Pt. II

[Rihanna]
On the first page of our story
The future seemed so bright
Then this thing turned out so evil
I don’t know why I’m still surprised
Even angels have their wicked schemes
And you take that to new extremes
But you’ll always be my hero
Even though you’ve lost your mind

[Chorus]
Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
But that’s all right because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that’s all right because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie
Ohhh, I love the way you lie

[Rihanna]
Now there’s gravel in our voices
Glass is shattered from the fight
In this tug of war, you’ll always win
Even when I’m right
‘Cause you feed me fables from your hand
With violent words and empty threats
And it’s sick that all these battles
Are what keeps me satisfied

[Chorus]

[Rihanna]
So maybe I’m a masochist
I try to run but I don’t wanna ever leave
Til the walls are goin’ up
In smoke with all our memories

[Eminem]
This morning, you wake, a sunray hits your face
Smeared makeup as we lay in the wake of destruction
Hush baby, speak softly, tell me I’ll be sorry
That you pushed me into the coffee table last night
So I can push you off me
Try and touch me so I can scream at you not to touch me
Run out the room and I’ll follow you like a lost puppy
Baby, without you, I’m nothing, I’m so lost, hug me
Then tell me how ugly I am, but that you’ll always love me
Then after that, shove me, in the aftermath of the
Destructive path that we’re on, two psychopaths but we
Know that no matter how many knives we put in each other’s backs
That we’ll have each other’s backs, ‘cause we’re that lucky
Together, we move mountains, let’s not make mountains out of molehills,
You hit me twice, yeah, but who’s countin’?
I may have hit you three times, I’m startin’ to lose count
But together, we’ll live forever, we found the youth fountain
Our love is crazy, we’re nuts, but I refused counselin’
This house is too huge, if you move out I’ll burn all two thousand
Square feet of it to the ground, ain’t shit you can do about it
With you I’m in my f-ckin’ mind, without you, I’m out it

[Chorus]

F-ckin' genius of a song.

All the roads we have to walk are winding

Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you. By now you should have somehow realized what you're gonna do. I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.

I said maybeeeeee, you're gonna be the one that saves meeeee.

Wonderwall by Oasis (trust that I totally just erased what I wrote because it said "Oasis by Wonderwall" instead of having it vice versa, okay, moving on...). Covered by Rihanna on her Last Girl On Earth Tour. This right here, is the epitome of LSS a.k.a last song syndrome.

So in my purpose of wanting to shove my sappy blog post yesterday to the side, let me tell you about how boring my day was and might as well prove how much the little things make me happy as a clam.

• Woke up earlier than usual at about half-past nine. Usually I wake up at 11 in the morning, or later. It's summer vacation protocol.
• After breakfast, Father asked me to come with him to visit my ninang (godmother). It was fun just sitting and catching up with her while sipping pineapple juice. :)
• On the way there, I was turning up the radio in the car and my station was playing Rihanna's Rockstar 101. How rad was that.
• I was actually thankful for Facebook chat this afternoon cause after what seemed like years (which was only actually 3 weeks), I finally got to chat with my friend again who I always talk to. We talk about a million different things all at once but usually we just talk about music and Rihanna, Lady GaGa, Beyonce and stuff like that. At one point, we were talking about Beyonce being cast as Wonderwoman...
• And then I got on YM to talk to one of my girls about their coming over and having an overnight at my place for my birthday and we actually ended up chatting for a long while. I missed that. I miss her! I miss all my girls! She actually said something that melted my heart, something like, "Even though we don't usually talk, you're still always there." <3 And we decided we're going to watch The Last Song on my bday which is going to be fantastic.
• I made a listography page. :)
• Finally, I have just seen Smallville's season finale and boy, was it such a cliffhanger!! They always do that, though, I wonder why I always still get pissed that it ends when it ends. I can't believe I'm gonna have to wait for a couple more months before the airing of the next episode. It would be much better if I had my brother home with me. We would be freaking out like craaaazy, especially with the way how it ended. Actually, even from the beginning of the episode it was already mind-blowing. Okay, let me stop there before I make this post into a Smallville finale recap.
  

So that's it. You can pretty much tell that I live in the Internet. When I'm not online, I'm either asleep or I'm eating. Or watching TV. Usually that's just Wednesdays when Glee is on. Okaaaay. It's 12:23 AM and I should probably be heading to bed, or at least, try to. Good night, world.

Russian Roulette

Rihanna.

Wow, I could write a book about how much I love this chick. But why don't we simply get into much more pressing details? Yes, that's her new single called "Russian Roulette." Have you heard it yet? (Cool, I'm rhyming lol.)

Let's discuss what the song actually says, shall we? Okay. Russian roulette, from its general definition, means a game of chance. Specifically, it is a game where two players play with a revolver loaded with only one bullet. Whoever gets the bullet loses and the one who doesn't die wins. It's a pretty sick game, if you ask me, or anyone with a leveled head for that matter. This game was used as a metaphor for Rihanna's new song, which was co-written (the other writer being Rihanna) and produced by Ne-Yo. The song is basically about taking a risk in life, whether regarding love, professional decisions, etc. It's about taking the high road or going the hard way and risking what's most important to you even without knowing whether you'll succeed or not. If you would actually listen to the song and analyze how does it relate to the game Russian roulette metaphorically, you won't probably be misinterpreting the song as a "suicide anthem" or whatnot.

So, now that we have gotten that out of the way, let's talk Rihanna. :D

Rihanna, Rihanna, Rihanna. Well, what can I say? She sure did surprise me when she came out with this mid-tempo track as her debut single from her upcoming fourth studio album, Rated R. But in a good way, of course! I was one to wish that she will release more ballad-y songs like "Unfaithful" and "Take A Bow" from her previous album releases, and what do you know, she actually did! Unlike most people who were expecting another upbeat club banger from her, I was really happy that she chose Russian Roulette as her first single. For one, because I was dying to hear how her vocals have improved and RR totally delivered that for me. Secondly, I liked how mixed people's reaction were. You will really see how Rihanna releasing a song affected so many. And I actually liked that she wanted to get out of her league and try something different. That's once concrete thing I love about Rihanna. She doesn't follow trends in anything. It may be that she takes inspiration from different things but she does her business in her own way.

Now, not even a week later the song premiered, it has already placed in music charts. And those people who were saying that it won't be much appreciated by the general audience? Well, they're quite wrong. I've already actually seen more than a couple of videos on YouTube covering the song, whether singing it or playing it on an instrument.

It's just crazy the way Rihanna is being received by the world. And with this new album coming November 23rd, I rekcon the world isn't ready yet. Well, they have to be prepared 'cause this is about to be one hell of a smash album I can tell you.

Listen to Russian Roulette