Produced by Timbaland and co-written by Justin Timberlake, Rihanna's "Rehab" is a slight but solid entry into the rapidly-expanding Timbalake catalog. With its pillowy acoustic guitars and strings and rattling percussion, "Rehab" could hold its own against most of the second-half ballads from FutureSex/LoveSounds. But listening to the song, it's tough not to speculate how it might sound if Timberlake sang the whole thing rather than just the backing vocals. Timberlake's not Marvin Gaye or anything, but his falsetto is perfectly equipped to convey the track's plaintive, regretful sentiment. Rihanna, meanwhile...not so much. Here she comes closer than usual to depicting something resembling human emotion, but she still comes off sounding like a robot programmed to impersonate Alanis Morrissette. There's something puzzling about the way Def Jam has pulled out all the stops to anoint Rihanna as the world's newest pop superstar and to position Good Girl Gone Bad as its blockbuster summer tentpole. The chief characteristic of Rihanna's voice, after all, is a sort of knife-edged emptiness, a mechanistic precision that rarely makes room for actual feelings to bulldoze their way through. And that blankness, coupled with Rihanna's glaring lack of technical vocal skill, serve to make her a truly unlikely pop star.
In the past, Rihanna's best singles ("Pon de Replay", "S.O.S.") have camouflaged her weaknesses by reducing her voice to a chilly sound-effect, using her on tracks propulsive and streamlined enough that she doesn't have any room to do anything other than coo melodies over the top. On last year's Evanescence-esque ballad "Unfaithful", though, she sounded totally lost trying to execute r&b runs that her voice just wasn't built to handle. Her current single "Umbrella" makes similar mistakes. The song's production gleams, but Rihanna's voice takes on an unpleasant icepick edge when she tries to fill the space between the slow-tempo beats. (A brain-numblingly awful Jay-Z verse helps nothing; it's like that guy's lost all interest in rapping.) "Umbrella" is uncompelling as event-pop, particularly because of the disconnect between Rihanna's cold, clinical delivery and the comforting warmth of the lyrics. Fortunately, most of Good Girl Gone Bad actually does the opposite, miraculously transforming Rihanna's all-consuming blankness into an aesthetic asset.
The majority of Good Girl Gone Bad doesn't qualify as r&b even in its Ciara robo-diva form. Even the sleekest Ciara tracks revolve around projection of a certain emotional state: the kinetic thrill of dancing, the teasing self-assurance of denying admirers your goodies. But Good Girl is closer to teenpop territory, where sex and consumerism supersede personal connection. It's telling that a couple of the album's standout tracks come from Stargate, the Norwegian production team who made their name writing songs for posthuman British computer-pop entities like Mis-Teeq and Atomic Kitten. Stargate is responsible for the best track here, "Don't Stop the Music", an amazing bit of synth-bass Euroclub insanity; halfway through, sampled mamasay-mamasas from Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something" come in and seamlessly blur into the track's overpowering beat. "Push up on Me" exploits the hell out of Rihanna's vocal similarities to any number of forgotten 80s Latin freestyle divas; she tries out a great clipped, staccato delivery over rapid-fire electro synth-blips. On "Shut Up and Drive", she sings about being a car looking for the right driver, appropriate considering that the song-- which samples New Order's "Blue Monday"-- begins with über-processed new wave guitars that sort of sound like the Cars.
When Good Girl Gone Bad falters, it usually does so because Rihanna's been pushed too far into her slick comfort zone; "Say It" is an irritatingly trebly and thin track, and "Question Existing" rests on puerile psuedoporn lyrics about Rihanna staring at herself naked in a mirror. But the album pushes Rihanna's flat coo through a number of different musical contexts, always finding new ways to further gloss things up. And those ideas work way more often than not, so Good Girl Gone Bad makes for an unexpectedly varied and satisfying listen. She's still a long way away from developing a recognizable personality, but at this rate, she's never going to need one.
