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September 13, 2019
Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you awesome songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the lyrics or title. Today, Barbadian singer Rihanna compares herself and her boyfriend to yellow diamonds in the very first line of her blockbuster 2011 hit, “We Found Love.”
She sings, “Yellow diamonds in the light / And we’re standing side by side / As your shadow crosses mine / What it takes to come alive / It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny / But I’ve gotta let it go.”
in 2009, Rihanna and singer Chris Brown were precious and rare diamond-grade performers on the verge of superstardom. They were an A-list couple enjoying the glow of the media spotlight, but what most fans didn’t know was that Brown had an abusive dark side — a side Rihanna describes in the song as his “shadow crossing mine.”
She finally comes to the realization that no matter how much she loves him, she can’t be with him anymore. She’s got to “let it go.”
Written by Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, “We Found Love” appeared on Rihanna’s sixth studio album, Talk That Talk, and rapidly ascended the charts in 25 countries. It topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks and went on to sell more than 20 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time.
“We Found Love” is described as an electro house song with elements of Europop, pop, techno, trance and Euro disco.
Interestingly, the song’s composer, Calvin Harris, cautioned a Q magazine writer against reading too much into the song’s hook phrase, “We found love in a hopeless place.”
While some believe that it represents two people finding each other when both are down on their luck, Harris described the origins of the phrase this way: “I don’t know exactly what I was thinking about. I was just playing the song and doing nonsense singing to see if the syllables fitted the song. It was like that. I was singing nonsense and that’s how the lyrics happened.”
Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born in Saint Michael, Barbados, in 1988. She grew up listing to reggae music and, as a 15-year-old, dropped out of high school to form a musical trio. The girls were lucky enough to land an audition with American record producer Evan Rogers, who recognized Rihanna’s talent and invited her to record some demo tapes. The tapes landed at the studios of Def Jam Recordings, where she was signed to a record deal by singer Jay-Z, who was also a record company exec.
Please check out the audio clip of Rihanna singing “We Found Love.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…
“We Found Love” Written by Calvin Harris. Performed by Rihanna, featuring Calvin Harris.
Yellow diamonds in the light And we’re standing side by side As your shadow crosses mine What it takes to come alive
It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny But I’ve gotta let it go
We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place
Shine a light through an open door Love and life I will divide Turn away ’cause I need you more Feel the heartbeat in my mind
Yellow diamonds in the light And we’re standing side by side As your shadow crosses mine (mine, mine, mine)
Credit: Image by Sam Collart [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
