The world’s most nonchalant pop star has returned to music for the first time in three years with…another soundtrack single.
Rihanna as a pop star has always been defined by embodying the essence of “cool”. When that meant dance beats and choreography, she did that. When it shifted to something bigger and brighter, she stepped out with the red hair and big hooks. As things got darker, she began twerking in grimy locations with Drake. Her core remained the same, but this is a woman who travelled between a lot of sounds and aesthetics without becoming the defining image of any.
All to her benefit. Nobody else from her generation of pop performers has been as successful, no matter how much effort they put in. Some people are just born stars, and Rihanna is one of those lucky few.
The people love her, and that has created a bottomless well of good will that seems to have no limits as she spends year after year teasing the release of her ninth album. Rumours swirl, including from herself, but nothing comes from it. But what little we’ve been fed recently has left me uneasy.
She remains one of the most bankable names in the world of music. With over ninety-million monthly listeners on spotify and albums worth of viral deep cuts, there is nobody else who has held more attention by doing basically nothing. Unless you count 2022’s ‘Lift Me Up’ as “doing something” - which for her sake I do not. That song was not great. Neither was 2020’s ‘BELIEVE IT’ with PARTYNEXTDOOR. But even with those two songs, she’s released the equivalent of less than half a song a year and has been rewarded for it.
Now in 2025, we have the Barbadian Pop Princess’ soundtrack offering for ‘Smurfs’ (2025), the bouncy, poorly mixed, remix-of-itself ‘Friend Of Mine’. A track that offers insight as to why the mysterious R9 might not be something worth pursuing.
In many ways, this stretches the limits of what I expect from a Rihanna song in any form. The vocal effects on the chorus (the only part she sings) smooth away any defects or personality that identify her as Rihanna. There is no fire here, just iciness and a vacant stare. Rihanna has not sounded this removed from a track in her life.
I think we all remember that viral video of Rihanna singing karaoke. She sounded awful, but definitely like herself. Which, to be fair, matches a lot of what she’s done through her career. Much like fellow pop icon Madonna, she has never let her difficulties recreating her studio sessions get in the way of a live experience. But no matter how hoarse or unsteady she has ever sounded, she has always been full throated.
Not here.
The mind boggles as to what the intention was behind this track. It’s a club song on a kid’s soundtrack, with no real effort to marry those two ideas. A clear cast off from recording sessions that clearly have not produced enough workable material for an album. If they had, she’d have released the damn thing and moved on. If this is the quality of her work, I’m not shocked we’ve been waiting so long.
In an interview with producer Jon Bellion for Billboard, he stated that,
“My whole career, I’ve wanted [a song] that plays at all the events — all the baby showers and sweet sixteens and wedding and Bar Mitzvahs,”
Well, I hope he gets his wish, but I just don’t see it happening with this song. It’s propulsive and ambitious, but it’s about as successful of a song as those remixes of viral news clips that used to go viral in the early 2010s. Basically, it sounds like the screaming goat remixes to me.
If I had to guess what the aim was here, I’d say this is Rihanna play testing a Charli xcx style pop return. Not that this sounds particularly like contemporary Charli xcx, but more that it inhabits that vacuous, club-focused pop style. Which makes sense, considering Rihanna’s already established “cool girl” vibes. But where the ‘brat’ star slashes through her often chaotic production with uncompromised noise and personality, ‘Friend Of Mine’ could have been sung by anyone. It barely sounds like Rihanna. I hate to be the one to suggest this, but if it came out this track was made with AI, it wouldn’t be shocking.
This is all to say, I do love Rihanna for what she was to music. But this is the third softlaunch on music she’s teased in the 2020s, and each attempt back in the studio has been an absolute disappointment. Anyone with sense gave up during the pandemic, but whatever glimmer of hope I’ve been holding on to is being let go.
Particularly if new music would even begin to sound like this.