"We Found Love" is a song by the Barbadian singer Rihanna featuring Scottish DJ Calvin Harris. It was released as the lead single from Rihanna's sixth album, Talk That Talk (2011), and was later included on Harris' 2012 album 18 Months. Produced and written by Harris, "We Found Love" premiered on September 22, 2011, and received polarized reviews from music critics upon release. "We Found Love" is an uptempo EDM song, with elements of electro house, dance-pop, techno, trance, Eurodance, Euro disco and Europop. Its lyrics speak of a couple who "found love in a hopeless place".
The song was a major worldwide success. It topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for ten non-consecutive weeks, becoming the longest running number-one single of 2011. The single also surpassed "Umbrella" and became Rihanna's longest running number one single. It was the singer's eleventh song to top the Hot 100, putting her in third place among female recording artists amassing the most number one singles. Outside of the United States, "We Found Love" topped the charts in 25 other countries, including Canada, New Zealand, France, Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Russia, Scotland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. According to Billboard it is the 29th most successful single of all time in the US. As of 2015, the single has sold 10.5 million copies worldwide, thus being one of the best selling singles of all time.
The song's accompanying music video, directed by Melina Matsoukas, depicts the singer as a drug-abusing thrill-seeker in a relationship that quickly spirals downward into addiction and domestic violence. The video won a Grammy Award for Best Music Video at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards and MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards. The song has been performed on both the British and American versions of The X Factor, as well as at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards and the 2012 Brit Awards. Multiple recording artists have covered "We Found Love" including British artists Coldplay and Jessie J.
Background
Following the release and success of her album Loud (2010), Rihanna originally revealed via Twitter that the album would be re-issued with new songs and released in Fall 2011, writing that "[t]he [Loud era] continues with more new music to add to [your] collection". In September 2011, Rihanna again took to the social networking site to confirm that the plans had been scrapped, with the singer tweeting "I [thought about] a [re-release], but LOUD is its own body of work! Plus [you] guys work so hard that [you] deserve to act brand new". On September 19, 2011, Rihanna further provoked excitement amongst her followers when she posted that she was listening to the song, only to be re-tweeted by Calvin Harris, who replied "Sometimes it feels like we find love in the most hopeless place", suggesting that his response contained possible lyrics from the song. In an interview with Capital FM, Harris – who produced the track – explained that followers of Rihanna had sent messages to him regarding their expectations of the song, saying "The song better not be rubbish", which he interpreted as slightly threatening, but went on to say that "it's all part of the fun". In an interview for Q magazine, Harris said of the lyric, "we found love in a hopeless place," "It could have been Jumpin Jaks in Dumfries (Harris' home town), I don't know exactly what I was thinking about."
"We Found Love" premiered in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2011, on Capital FM, and was sent for mainstream adds in the United States on October 11, 2011. The song was released via iTunes on September 22, 2011."We Found Love" digital single on various international iTunes stores on September 22, 2011: During an interview with MTV News, Calvin Harris revealed, "'We Found Love,' is the most successful thing I've done ever... It's not strictly a song by me, obviously, it's by Rihanna. She sings it...It was great to work with her... No one could have taken it as far as she did. You can't escape it here [in America]. I've heard it a lot. I've heard it probably more times today than I did when I was mixing it. Which is a good thing... Ever since the Rihanna song did well, a lot of people want to do some stuff, which is great... That's what I enjoy doing. In terms of actual names, I've not done anything yet." In October 2012, British singer Leona Lewis claimed that she was originally chosen to sing the song but ended up losing it to Rihanna when Harris went touring with the latter, commenting. "I didn’t commit to it because I wanted "Trouble" to be my first single so I think that was another reason they went with Rihanna. It was the same version and production but mine’s better." In 2013, Nicole Scherzinger claimed that she was the first artist given the song but ended up rejecting it, commenting. "I've got the demo of that song and I was busy at the time. They'd sent me a few dance tracks and I wasn't able to get to them and I was like, 'Oh there's so much dance and I want to take a break from it."
Artwork The artwork for "We Found Love" was released by Rihanna's official Facebook page on September 22, 2011. Grady Smith of Entertainment Weeklys The Music Mix criticized the song's artwork, writing "'We found love in a hopeless place,' Rihanna repeats over a David Guetta-ish synth beat. But judging by the single cover, her place doesn't look too hopeless, does it? Maybe there's a building on fire outside the frame, and that fire hydrant doesn't work. I guess that would be hopeless." A reviewer for Sugar Magazine wrote that "On anyone else this would be a pretty odd look but Rihanna somehow makes a denim overload look good." A reviewer for Neon Limelight commented that Rihanna appeared to be adopting a tomboy image for the new project, writing, "She really is going for that sexy tomboy look this album era it seems; remember the laid back look she rocked on the single's cover art?".
Composition "We Found Love" is an EDM and electro-R&B song, with elements of electro house, Europop, Eurodance, techno, dance-pop, trance, and Euro disco. According to the digital music sheet published at musicnotes.com, the song is written in the key of G flat major and it is set at a tempo of 128 beats per minute. The instrumentation of "We Found Love" consists of alarm bells, a keyboard, repetitive pumped-up synthesizers and 4/4 beats.
Rihanna's vocal range in the song spans one octave, from the lower note of C4 to the higher note of C5. Priya Elan of NME commented that Rihanna sounds "extremely relaxed" and Bill Lamb of About.com wrote that her vocals are simple and unaffected. Leah Collins of The Vancouver Sun wrote that Rihanna's vocals on "We Found Love" were similar to her vocals on "Fly". According to Elan, the keyboard work in the song bears resemblance to that in from "Only Girl (In the World)" and the melody is similar to that of "Complicated", a track included in Rihanna's 2010 studio album Loud. Similarly, Michael Cragg of The Guardian noted that "We Found Love" is in the same vein as "Only Girl (In the World)", with regard to its dance beat.
The lyrical content of the song is sparse and largely revolves around Rihanna chanting the song's hook line, "We found love in a hopeless place". Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone described it as "half-baked romantic". Rihanna starts the song in a falsetto airy voice as she sings, "Yellow diamonds in the light / And we’re standing side by side / As your shadow crosses mine / What it takes to come alive." Michael Cragg commented that the first chorus is almost being sidelined in favor of a large chunk of Harris's riff, before they join on the second chorus. The hook repeatedly rings throughout the song.
Critical reception The song received polarized reviews from music critics. Amanda Dobbins of New York magazine praised the composition of the song, writing "Harris's electro fingerprints are all over this one — it plays like a straight house track, with some dreamy Rihanna vocals added in over the beat." Robbie Daw of Idolator commented on the song's lyrics, with particular emphasis on the line "We found love in a hopeless place", writing that it is possibly the best lyric in pop music so far in 2011. A reviewer for Instinct magazine praised the song, writing that "We Found Love" does not mark a departure from the dance-floor oriented material Rihanna debuted on Loud, but it certainly boasts "a higher-energy, peak-hour vibe". Similarly, Michael Cragg of The Guardian commented that the song takes the dance direction Rihanna hinted at on "Only Girl (In the World)" and continues releasing similar songs, making reference to "We Found Love". Cragg also likened the song to Leona Lewis's recent single, "Collide", but criticized the song's structure, writing "[it] is slightly odd". He ended his review writing, "Either way, she could have recited Nick Clegg's conference speech from Wednesday over the sound of Harris cracking his knuckles and it would be a hit."
Priya Elan of NME commented, "By now it's pretty customary to have a jaw-on-the-floor reaction to the first single from a Rihanna album. 'Pon De Replay', 'SOS', 'Umbrella', 'Russian Roulette', 'Only Girl In The World'." Despite complimenting Rihanna for sounding extremely relaxed and calling her vocal as "luxurious calling to mind the atmosphere", Elan concluded that the over-all effect is underwhelming. She continued by writing that instead of re-inventing the pop wheel, "We Found Love" has "a whiff of treading-water about it" and that "if there is a 'goosebump' moment to be had it comes after many multiple plays and, dare we say it, a glass of something strong." Awarding "We Found Love" two stars out of five, Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone was critical, writing that it "is much ado about very little indeed" and that is "an insipid tune". He concluded that Rihanna repeats 'We found love in a hopeless place' "approximately 350 times, hoping it will start to mean something. It's the worst single of Rihanna’s career. It will probably top the Hot 100 anyway." Leah Collins of The Vancouver Sun initially praised Rihanna's vocal performance in the song, writing that she "smoothes out her vocals", before adding, "Angelic as she sounds, though, [her] performance – which is mostly just her repeating the line 'We found love in a hopeless place' – seems to take second place to Harris' repetitive synth-based blare." Similarly, Amos Barshad of Grantland criticized the singer's vocal performance, calling it "a complete afterthought" before concluding, "People who regularly attend the Electric Zoo festival: Rihanna wants your money!"
A reviewer for GlobalGrind commented on the song's lyrics, suggesting that there is perhaps an underlying message in the song for ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, in the line "We found love in a hopeless place". This further raised suspicion when Brown re-tweeted one of Rihanna's posts on Twitter, which read "Sometimes it feels like we find love in the most hopeless place". Jessica Herndon of People magazine praised the song, saying that "'We Found Love' had an amazing influence on people all across the world in 2012, becoming one of the most popular and most successful songs".