It's somewhat surprising to learn that Rihanna Fenty is still only 19 years old; having already worked with some of r 'n' b's biggest stars, it seems like the Bajan songbird has been around for years. In a way, she has been; her first album, 2005's Music of the Sun, saw the then 17-year-old explode onto a popular music scene that was fast becoming saturated with Jamaican dancehall and reggae-tinged r 'n' b, thanks to her fellow Caribbean natives Sean Paul and Shaggy. Her first single from that album, 'Pon De Replay', was an instant hit, as was the subsequent album, last year's 'A Girl Like Me' - which spawned the Soft Cell-sampling mammoth worldwide hit 'SOS'. Now back with her third offering, the singer, who was signed to Def Jam by Jay-Z himself, wanted "to keep people dancing, but still be soulful at the same time". In a sense, Good Girl Gone Bad adheres to that mission statement, as there are plenty of uptempo, danceable tracks to keep the album moving; but it's also an incredibly generic collection of songs that sound annoyingly similar to each other. Opening single Umbrella is probably the best thing on here, its catchy chorus and downbeat, reggae-smattered flavour providing a foil to Jay-Z's thuggish rap interludes - but, with the exception of perhaps three other tracks (the cinematic, attitude-fraught Breakin' Dishes, the Justin Timberlake co-penned Rehab -similar in tone to Timberlake's own 'What Goes Around' - and the edgy dancehall vibe of Sell Me Candy), Good Girl Gone Bad is just plain boring. What's more, most of the tracks sound like they've been constructed with an upgraded version of one of those 'make your own dance/r 'n' b track' programmes that you can buy in PC World. Lyrically, Rihanna takes the 'pop music doesn't necessarily need to have depth' argument to its absolute limit, with bombs like 'Baby, 'cos in the dark, you can't see shiny cars' and 'I'm roasting marshmallows on the fire / And what I'm burning is your attire'. She may be neoteric royalty in most r 'n' b circles, but Good Girl Gone Bad does nothing to prove to the casual music fan that Rihanna is anything except occasionally fortunate.
