Umm… buh-rella ella ella

f you’re anything like me you woulda missed the big furore over Rihanna’s “Umbrella” because you thought it was the standard R&B/pop tripe that gets rolled out every 5 minutes – and on a cursory listen, that’s exactly how I viewed it.

However, it was the most successful song of 2007 on the United World Chart and has been announced as the 7th most successful song of the last decade. It was number one on Entertainment Weekly’s “Ten Best Singles of 2007” and number three on Rolling Stone’s “100 Best Songs of 2007” as well as “Song of the Year” in Blender’s Reader’s poll for 2007. It achieved the biggest debut in the six-year history of the iTunes Music Store and jumped forty places to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 where it stayed for seven weeks… phew…!

Random Interest Snippet: Nicky Wire of the Manics said: “This was my favourite track of 2007. It’s just so razor-sharp. And who’d have thought a song called ‘Umbrella’ would be Number One all over the world? It’s such an un-pop word. I love it when a record seems to come from another universe. I just wanted us to have a stab at it!”

Hopefully by now I’ve buttered you up enough with all those impressive stats to convince you to give the song a second chance xD (assuming you didn’t like it in the first place) so here’s a clip in a completely different context to help you divorce the song from the genre . This version is by Swedish hard-rockers Lillasyster.

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