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Just as people called Ruby probably hate Kaiser Chiefs, and the world’s Carolines must have mixed feelings about Neil Diamond, so women named Ella had a pretty torrid time of it when Rihanna hit number one in 2007 with “Umbrella”. That repeated “-ella, -ella, -ella” in the indelible chorus was the secret sauce that made the song the UK’s longest-running chart-topper since Wet Wet Wet’s “Love Is All Around” in 1994, and planted Robyn Rihanna Fenty from Barbados on pop’s A-list.
“Umbrella” wasn’t Rihanna’s first hit single. When it came out in the UK in March 2007 she had already released two albums, the first when she was just 17. She had made an early splash with the bouncy dancehall pop of “Pon De Replay” in 2005 and scored a US number one with “SOS” in 2006. But the latter was simply a modern refashioning of “Tainted Love” and she hadn’t yet developed a style that was distinctively her own.
It’s hard to imagine now, but her status back then meant she was far from the first name that sprang to mind when the writers of “Umbrella” started to shop the song around. It was written by Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, Terius “The-Dream” Nash and Stewart’s cousin Kuk Harrell, who together formed the Atlanta-based production house RedZone Entertainment. Feeling inspired by a booming beat that Stewart was working on, Nash dashed to the vocal booth and began to sing. “The first verse was written in 60 seconds,” he has said. The whole thing was finished in two hours. “We knew it was special,” Harrell said. “We didn’t know it was a hit. Nobody knows that.”
Like Rihanna, the RedZone team have since found stratospheric success, writing smashes including Justin Bieber’s “Baby” and Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, but at that point they were less powerful. Their best contact was Britney Spears, for whom Stewart and Nash had co-written “Me Against the Music”, a 2003 duet with Madonna. But in early 2007 Spears was at a low ebb, going in and out of rehabilitation facilities and shaving her own head in front of dozens of paparazzi in a Los Angeles hair salon. It’s not clear whether she was given the chance to hear “Umbrella” and reject it personally. But her record label, Jive, said they already had enough songs for her next album.
Stewart and co really wanted the song to be sung by Mary J Blige, who again was much a bigger star than Rihanna back then. When “Umbrella” was on the table she was the most nominated artist at the 2007 Grammys, up for eight gongs. She didn’t need it.
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A hungry young Rihanna fought for it and won, with help from Jay-Z, who was then the president and CEO of her record label, Def Jam. He also added a last-minute rap to the front of the song, increasing its star power and effectively introducing Rihanna to the world properly: “Little Miss Sunshine, Rihanna where you at?”
Its deluge of catchiness made it an obvious pop smash, but the song was boosted to the status of genuine cultural moment by fortunate timing — for its makers at least. Jay-Z’s verse mixed appropriate weather metaphors with reference to the global financial crisis that was just beginning (while reassuring worried listeners that he was so unimaginably wealthy that it wouldn’t affect him). In the UK, a series of serious floods in June and July 2007 made it seem as if Rihanna was moonlighting as a weather forecaster at the Met Office.
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The ubiquity of the track meant that for a while it seemed to be the first song considered by anyone in need of a cover. Taylor Swift sang it for a minute and a half at an iTunes concert recorded for Apple Music around this time. “Just trying to get your attention,” she said as she moved swiftly on. The pop-rock band McFly gave it some chugging punkish energy on a B-side the same autumn. Biffy Clyro, who are usually louder, recorded it acoustically for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge segment, also in 2007. The American pop-punk band All Time Low tackled it in 2008 for a forgotten compilation album called Punk Goes Crunk, on which guitar groups reworked rap and R&B songs.
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Then there are the Manic Street Preachers, whose reputation for seriousness belies the fact that they have a long history of cute covers including “Bright Eyes”, “Let’s Stay Together” and “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”. They delivered “Umbrella” three ways in 2008 — as an anthemic rocker, an acoustic strum and an echoey, electronic “Grand Slam mix”. It was clear confirmation that “Umbrella” had unfurled into every corner of pop and Rihanna was about to become inescapable.
Let us know your memories of ‘Umbrella’ in the comments section below
The paperback edition of ‘The Life of a Song: The stories behind 100 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Chambers
Music credits: The Island Def Jam; Mercury; Big Machine; Universal; 14th Floor/The All Blacks; Fearless/Concord; Sony
