Lady Gaga song facts

ALEJANDRO by LADY GAGA

This is a track from Lady Gaga's EP, The Fame Monster. In this song Gaga fends off three Mexican lovers. Latin lovers often crop on records - other tracks featuring them include Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" and ABBA's "Fernando."

The video courts religious controversy in a Madonna-ish way by showing Gaga dressed in a red latex nun outfit eating a rosary. It also intermingles other Catholic imagery with provocative shots of a same-sex orgy. Not only Catholic groups objected - Katy Perry tweeted: "Using blasphemy as entertainment is as cheap as a comedian telling a fart joke."
Klein defended the use of religious imagery and symbolism in an email to MTV News: "The religious symbolism is not meant to denote anything negative, but represents the character's battle between the dark forces of this world and the spiritual salvation of the Soul," he wrote. "Thus at the end of the film, she chooses to be a nun, and the reason her mouth and eyes disappear is because she is withdrawing her senses from the world of evil and going inward towards prayer and contemplation."

He added that the scene in which Gaga eats the rosary beads is meant to represent "the desire to take in the holy."

Every track on The Fame Monster represents a "fear" of some "monster." GaGa has said this song was influenced by her "fear of sex" monster.

The song's music video was directed by the photographer Steven Klein. Gaga discussed with The London Times May 22, 2010 it's concept. She explained it is about the "purity of my friendships with my gay friends, and how I've been unable to find that with a straight man in my life. It's a celebration and an admiration of gay love - it confesses my envy of the courage and bravery they require to be together. In the video I'm pining for the love of my gay friends - but they just don't want me."

The song opens with a weeping violin, which incorporates the melody from "Csárdás" by Italian composer Vittorio Monti (1868-1922). "Csárdás" was composed in 1904 and Monti based the violin show-piece on a Hungarian folk dance.

Director Steven Klein said of his collaboration with Gaga on the music video to Rolling Stone: "She likes epics. It fits her personality. We combined dance, narrative and attributes of surrealism. The process was to express Lady Gaga's desire to reveal her heart and bear her soul."

Klein had never directed a proper music video before. However, after seeing Gaga perform live, he felt inspired. "I went to see her show in NYC, and it felt like performance art in the '90s. And I had not seen anything like that in a while," Klein told MTV News. "Lady Gaga approached me about doing this particular song, and in the past, I have passed on such offers, but this time I felt [a] narrative drive you could make interesting, and we both aligned on the vision for the film."
He added: "I had a vision and story for the film, she reacted to it, then we both collaborated ... We shot in Los Angeles on April 30, 2010. My schedule and hers are both complicated, so it took a lot to get the days that we both could work together."

Klein went on to explain the clip: "I was not thinking in terms [of influences.] I saw it more as a combination of cinema and theater," he said. "[It is] about a woman's desire to resurrect a dead love and who can not face the brutality of her present situation. The pain of living without your true love."

TEETH by LADY GAGA

This sexual romp is a bouncy marching song full of horns, looped samples, cossack-like music and call-and-response vocals. It finds Gaga singing of a S&M desire for being tied up and bitten. The tune was produced by Teddy Riley, who was an architect of the late 1980s and early '90s New Jack Swing sound and was responsible for hits by Bobby Brown, Guy, and Keith Sweat. He went on to work with many leading names in the music industry including Boyz II Men, Snoop Dogg and the late Michael Jackson.

Riley's daughter Taja Riley was credited with co-writing the song. However, her father sued her in 2013 for copyright infringement and fraud claiming that she didn't co-pen the tune. The New Jack Swing pioneer said that she lied about the songwriting credit and should not have received a publishing deal from EMI Music.

Teddy Riley also filed suit against Lady Gaga later in the same year, claiming he was promised 25% of writing fees, but has received nothing.

LOVEGAME by LADY GAGA

Moroccan/Swedish producer RedOne (born Nadir Khayat) helmed and co-wrote this track. He also produced Lady Gaga's first two hits "Just Dance" and "Poker Face."

Lady Gaga explained to MTV News that the song's promo, "is a genuine New York lifestyle video." She added: "It's got that feeling of 'gay, black New York,' of inclusion and glamour. I wanted to really bring forth the girl that I was four years ago, and I wanted to put it in the setting of the underground subway. I worked with [video director] Joseph Kahn, and he did an amazing job. He didn't just capture the fashion; he captured the artist."

It was feared that the song's raunchy lyrical content would be too rude to earn Lady Gaga her third consecutive UK #1. As a consequence "Paparazzi" was released as the singer's third single in the UK instead. A source told The Sun newspaper: "For your first two UK singles to go to #1 is amazing and we would like to try and carry that on."

When this went to #1 on the Mainstream Top 40 airplay chart, Lady Gaga became only the third artist and first American in the history of that tally to collect three #1 songs from a debut album. Just Dance and Poker Face were the two The Fame cuts that preceded this one to the top. The two other acts to achieve this feat were Swedish pop group Ace Of Base, who reigned consecutively in 1993-94 on Mainstream Top 40 with three tracks from their debut LP The Sign, and Canadian artist Avril Lavigne, who repeated the feat in 2002-03 with a trio of tracks from her debut release Let Go.

JUDAS by LADY GAGA

This club-banger is the second single from Lady Gaga's sophomore album, Born This Way. After it leaked onto the Internet on April 15, 2011, the singer immediately released the song to iTunes, four days before the planned release date.

The song is about falling in love with a backstabbing guy and was inspired by Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ. It's not the first time Gaga has written about falling for the wrong man. She previously sung of being attracted to someone who's not good for her in "LoveGame" and "Bad Romance."

Fernando Garibay, who co-produced many of the tracks on Born This Way, told MTV News about the tune: "Judas is produced by RedOne and Gaga, obviously, and it's a statement about, again I can't speak for her, but what I gather is it's about sometimes not choosing the right choice. But you can't deny that the choice is not a part of you and who you are."

Despite the dark lyrics, the song is aimed at clubbers. Said Garibay to MTV News: "'Judas' is a dance song, definitely. I think 'Judas' in the traditional RedOne/Gaga vein. It's great because it's a serious message, it's a little playful, but still serious, but still somehow you wind up dancing to it. That's what's great about her music. You know, like, my favorite songs of all time, dance songs, 'Billie Jean,' is a story you wouldn't think of singing but then you wind up dancing and singing the lyrics. I think that's the holy grail of music for me, which is dance."

In an interview posted on YouTube called "Musicians@Google Presents: Google Goes Gaga," the Poker Face singer explained that "Judas" talks about confronting one's demons. "You have to look into what is haunting you and you need to look into forgiving yourself in order to move on," she said. "And it's really fun to dance to and sounds like it could be a pop priest record."

Gaga plays Mary Magdalene in the song's music video, whilst model-turned-actor Norman Reedus is Judas Iscariot. Gaga and her creative director Laurieann Gibson co-directed the clip after the initial collaborator had to drop out. She told MTV News: "When we got to 'Judas,' it was very clear to me and the inspiration was very clear to her. We approached a director, but then the dates actually got messed up and it was conflicted and her manager and her looked at me [and asked me to direct it with her]."

Prior to its release, the Catholic League condemned Gaga for the video's alleged use of religious imagery and also condemned the singer for seemingly purposefully debuting the song and video close to Holy Week and Easter. Gibson addressed the controversial Christian elements behind the project telling the The Hollywood Reporter she was initially fearful of the direction the visual was going. "It went through several changes and late-night debates because at one point, there were two completely different views and I was like, 'Listen, I don't want lightning to strike me! I believe in the gospel and I'm not going there.'"

According to Gibson, the video's original concept was reigned in an attempt to avoid causing offense. "It was amazing because to have that conversation about salvation, peace and the search for the truth in a room of non-believers and believers, to me, that was saying God is active in a big way," Gibson said. "And the place that it came to is surreal. We don't touch on things that we have no right touching upon, but the inspiration and the soul and idea that out of your oppression, your darkness, your Judas, you can come into the marvelous light. So it's about the inspiration and to never give up… We've created a new Jerusalem. I will tell you now, first off, I'm Christian, and my career is evidence of God in my life."

Gaga discussed this song in one of a succession of "Gagavision" videos leading up to the release of Born This Way. "I wrote it really quick," she said. "I mean, all of the songs on the album, to be completely candid, the creative process is approximately [a] 15-minutes process. It's 15 minutes of vomiting my creative ideas in the forms of melodies, usually, or chord progressions and melodies and some sort of a theme, lyric idea. And then I spend days, weeks, months, years fine tuning. But the idea is, you honor your vomit."

In the final seconds of the video, there is a spoken word sequence about Gaga being "beyond repentance." She explained to NME: "People say I am trashy or pretentious or this and that. This is my way of saying, 'I've already crossed the line. I won't even try to repent.' Nor should I."

Gaga told MSN Canada she didn't intend the song to be a direct interpretation of the New Testament account of Jesus' fallen disciple. "Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that my schooling [in Catholic school] informed the songwriting on that record in particular. 'Judas' is a metaphor and an analogy about forgiveness and betrayal and things that haunt you in your life, and how I believe that it's the darkness in your life that ultimately shines and illuminates the greater light that you have upon you," she said.

"Someone once said to me, 'If you have no shadows then you're not standing in the light.' So the song is about washing the feet of both good and evil, and understanding and forgiving the demons from your past in order to move into the greatness of your future," she continued. "I just like really aggressive metaphors — harder, thicker, darker — and my fans do as well. So it is a very challenging and aggressive metaphor, but it is a metaphor."

The video is a Fellini-esque story depicting Judas and the other disciples as bikers in a modern-day Jerusalem. Gaga as Magdalene warns Jesus about his apostle's impending betrayal, but becomes hypnotized by Judas' allure.

The clip portrays the biblical story with Gaga's distinct visual style and the over-the-top sexual tension. She told E! News: "This video is not meant to be an attack on religion. I respect and love everyone's beliefs. I'm a religious and spiritual person who's obsessed with religious art. I'm obsessed with it.

I believe I was put on this earth to cause a ruckus," she continued. "At the beginning, when I came out with 'Just Dance,' I couldn't get an interview. ... I couldn't get on the radio. I just want to keep making stuff that's great and thought-provoking."

Gaga told MTV UK how unfaithful boyfriends inspired this song. She explained: "I've had lots of ex-boyfriends betray me – a--holes, we all have them – and in particular there was one who loved Judas Priest, loved heavy metal.

Originally I began to write the song about an ex-lover, who betrayed me, who loved heavy metal music and then as I started to write the lyrics, I thought about Judas and the biblical implications and how Judas was the betrayer.

Once the song was finished and I thought about what I wanted to do with the video, in reality of the story of Judas, he didn't really betray Christ because he was part of the prophecy and Jesus knew that he would betray him – it was all part of the destiny of life.

So I thought of a more beautiful and liberating way to tackle the message of the song – we attack the idea by saying my ex-boyfriend betrayed me and this person in my life haunts me but I forgive them and we'll move on to make room for what's good."

Chicago-based singer and songwriter Rebecca Francescatti filed a lawsuit against Gaga on August 5, 2011. She claimed that "substantial original portions" of this song were lifted from her song "Juda," which she recorded in 1999 with her band Rebecca F. & the Memes and re-recorded in 2005 for her album, It's All About You. Francescatti's former bass player Brian Gaynor worked with Lady Gaga on Born This Way.

U.S. District Judge Marvin E. Aspen dismissed the lawsuit concluding that the songs do not "share enough unique features to give rise to a breach of the duty not to copy another's work," and are therefore not substantially similar.

JUST DANCE by LADY GAGA

After writing for various artists including The Pussycat Dolls, this was Lady Gaga's first solo single release. The song finds her getting drunk and disoriented at a nightclub - she tells herself to just dance, and everything will be OK.

This features Colby O'Donis and Akon. Lady Gaga and O'Donis are both signed to Akon's Kon Live record label.

Lady Gaga wrote this song a day after arriving in Los Angeles from New York. The singer-songwriter told HX Magazine: "I was taken very quickly out of my party lifestyle. I wrote it instantly - like it flew out of my body." She explained in the same interview the meaning of the song as "If you've ever been so high that it's, like, scary, the only way you can deal with it is not deal with it, so you just kind of dance through the intoxication."

GaGa told About.com about the song's promo: "That video was a vision of mine. It was Molina the director who wanted to do something, to have a performance art aspect that was so pop but it was still commercial, but that felt like lifestyle."

Lady Gaga took her stage name from the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga." The New York artist's real name is Stefani Germanotta.

GaGa explained on her website that the underlying theme of The Fame album "is about how anyone can feel famous. Pop culture is art. It doesn't make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it's a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle."

After topping the singles tallies in Canada and Australia in 2008, this song ascended to pole position in the same week in January on both the UK and US charts.

This was the first #1 song on the Hot 100 to include the word "dance" since February 1991, when by C + C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" ascended to the top position.

This reached pole position on the song's 22nd week on the Hot 100. It was the longest trip to the top since Creed's "With Arms Wide Open" reached #1 in its 27th week in November 2000.

Lady Gaga performed this at the inaugural NewNowNext Awards, which were broadcast on the Logo network in June 2008. Logo is targeted to the gay community, which comprises much of Lady Gaga's fan base.

This was not only the breakthrough hit for Lady Gaga, but was also instrumental in introducing to the Top 40 a techno-synth sound that had been popular in Europe for the previous decade. Lady Gaga's frequent co-writer and producer RedOne told Billboard magazine that the song, "was essentially a rock track but with synths instead of guitars. Big drums. The vocals were the melody, with a simple chorus. Thank God we were lucky and it was perfect timing. The moment the public heard it, they bought into it."

Gaga included this in the set for her 2017 Super Bowl performance in Houston, Texas.

Pride Month: song facts about popular songs

SIDE TO SIDE by ARIANA GRANDE (featuring NICKI MINAJ )

This finds Grande in a relationship with a bad boy despite the warnings from her friends. It appears they have had so much sex, Grande can't walk straight - he's got her "walkin' side to side."

This island-sounding jam features a verse by Nicki Minaj, marking the third time the two superstars have collaborated on a song. The pair previously appeared on Jessie J's 2014 track "Bang Bang" and The Pinkprint's "Get on Your Knees."

The reggae pop song's dancehall riddim was supplied by Swedish hitmaker Max Martin and his co-writing and production partner Ilya Salmanzadeh. Martin and Ilya produced as a pair four of Dangerous Woman's eleven tracks and also separately worked on another one each.

Two other hitmakers, Savan Kotecha and Alexander Kronlund, are also credited as writers along with Grande and Minaj.

The video finds Ariana Grande spinning, boxing and weightlifting in the gym clad in a combination of spandex and casual threads from GUESS's "Active" women's line. She's later joined by Nicki Minaj for a post-workout session in an electric blue sauna.

The clip was directed by Hannah Lux Davis, who has filmed a number of videos for the pair. She shot Grande's "Focus" and "Into You," as well as Minaj's "Only" and " The Night Is Still Young" visuals. They also all worked together on the trio's collaboration with Jessie J, "Bang Bang."

The lyrics detail the painful downside of having an overly active sex life. "That whole song is about riding leading to soreness," Grande confessed to MTV News. "'Ride dick bicycle' is the lyric, indeed."

Grande is referring to Minaj's line where she sings:

Wrist icicle
Ride dick bicycle
Come true yo
Get you this type of blow

Minaj covers the bridge of this song with two distinct sections, one sung ("This is the new style, with the fresh type of flow"), one rapped ("All these bitches flows is my mini-me"). She also appears at the beginning of the song namechecking Grande, then at the end where both singers close out the song together, with Minaj repeating her sung section from the bridge.

The song opens with the chorus, which shows up four times in the song, but with different elements in each repetition. Each chorus builds in intensity, with more backing vocals added for each progression.

Musically, the track never gets very dense, which pushes the vocals out front. There are lots of different instruments and vocal tracks in the mix, but they are constantly coming in and out. Listen for hand claps, finger snaps, synth stabs, a woodblock, and even a saxophone.

MILLION REASONS by LADY GAGA

Lady Gaga sings on this country-flavored power ballad of her determination to stay in a relationship that appears to have run its course. She penned the heartbreaking song with Nashville songwriter Hillary Lindsey, who also worked with her for two other songs on Joanne. Lindsey is probably best known for the many hit tunes she's co-penned for Carrie Underwood, as well as Little Big Town's "Girl Crush."

A Rhinestone-clad Lady Gaga performed the song live for the first time on October 5, 2016, when she kicked off her Dive Bar Tour in the US at Nashville's 5 Spot. Hillary Lindsay shared the microphone on harmonies. When Gaga introduced the tune she told the crown in a country accent:

"I wrote this song with a Nashville native, Hillary Lindsey. We sat on a couch together, and we were going back and forth, guitar and piano, and we were going, 'Why these men, you know?' All these men - my dad, my boyfriend, all the men in my life - they gave me a million reasons [to leave], but I just need one good one to stick around but you're giving me a million to walk away. Ladies and gentlemen, Hillary Lindsey."

Gaga performed this song on the October 24, 2016 episode of Saturday Night Live with Hillary Lindsey accompanying her on acoustic guitar.

The lyrics were rumored to be about Gaga's breakup with her former fiancé Taylor Kinney, but the singer told Howard Stern they were written about all the men in her life, including Kinney, her father and every other guy she's had a relationship with. "It's never just about the guy," she said. "It's always about that guy, the guy before him."

The song was also written for women all over the world. "How cool is it that it was #1 in Saudi Arabia?... I just really want women to be heard," Gaga said. "I've dated a lot of cowboys and I just really want women to be heard... Not in a way that 'men are bad,' but I think it's time for us to heal from those wounds that divide us. In this country we are so divided. I just hope this album provides some healing."

Lady Gaga performed the song at the UK's Royal Variety Performance in front of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall on December 6, 2016.

Gaga sang this during her halftime performance at the 2017 Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons. "We're here to make you feel good," she told the crowd before starting the song. She managed to say hi to her mom and dad in the middle of the song.

The song originally dropped out of the Hot 100 after peaking at #52. However, it got a post-Super Bowl bump, sending it back to the chart, all the way to #4. This is one of the million reasons Super Bowl acts play for free.

HOLD UP by BEYONCÉ

Lemonade is a concept album, where Beyoncé recounts a story of discovering and wrestling with her husband's infidelity. This is the second track, by which stage her suspicions have been aroused.

On this kiss-off, Beyoncé attests that no-one loves her husband like she does, so it would be unwise for Jay-Z to cheat on her.

Hold up, they don't love you like I love you
Slow down, they don't love you like I love you
Back up, they don't love you like I love you
Step down, they don't love you like I love you

The song was produced by Diplo of Major Lazer and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend. It was Koenig's first credit on a Beyoncé song.

In 2011, Diplo produced " End of Time" on Beyoncé's 4 while her single "Run the World (Girls)" sampled Major Lazer's "Pon de Floor." Diplo also co-produced the Lemonade track "All Night."

The track includes interpolations from Soulja Boy's "Turn My Swag On" ("I hop up out the bed, turn my swag on") and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps." It also samples the instrumental intro to Andy Williams's "Can't Get Used to Losing You."

Instead of directly sampling "Maps" chorus which goes, "Wait, they don't love you like I love you," Beyoncé alternately sings, "Hold up, they don't love you like I love you." It was Ezra Koenig who first thought of the change, tweeting the revised line on October 21, 2011.

Three years later, Keoenig was in a studio with Diplo, where they were working on a "Can't Get Used to Losing You" loop. Koenig wrote some lyrics based off his old tweet to go with it, which he intended to release as a Vampire Weekend song. Someone, however convinced him to send it to Beyoncé. Koenig said. "Beyoncé 100% made it her own, and I'm very glad to have been a part of it."

Psychedelic rock singer-songwriter Father John Misty (once of Fleet Foxes) wrote the first verse and refrain. Producer/composer Emile Haynie (Eminem, Kanye West, Ice Cube), singer-songwriter MNEK (of "Never Forget You" fame) producer Onye Anyanwu and Brooklyn multimedia artist Melo-X also have writing credits.

Father John Misty recalled how Beyoncé came to record his demo:

"About a year and half ago, my friend Emile Haynie played Beyoncé some of my music, along with some tunes I've written for other people, back when she was looking for collaborators for the record…Pretty soon after they sent along the demo for 'Hold Up', which was just like a minute of the sample and the hook. I'm pretty sure they were just looking for lyrics, but I went crazy and recorded a verse melody and refrain too…

I was mostly kind of in the dark, my involvement with the record kind of ends with me just sending off the demo, it wasn't until she came to my Coachella set in 2015 and told me personally it had made the record that I really had anything concrete with which to convince my friends that I hadn't actually gone insane."

Speaking to Under The Radar, Misty revealed that the best moment of 2015 was when he caught Beyoncé dancing to his set at Coachella. "The low point has been everything since," he added.

Co-writer Melo-X also sang backup vocals. He recalled to Pitchfork: "I kind of put a bunch of ideas down. A bunch of harmonies, a bunch of different layers, and she kept a lot of that in. In the second chorus you can hear my vocals under hers coming in. It's cool that she kept that. I was just putting that there to create a vibe. I had like in my mind, I was thinking of Bob Marley and his backup singers, he had his wife, and how they would harmonize to a lot things that he did. So I took to that approach with the background vocals that I did."

The video shows Beyoncé gleefully smashing car windows and police surveillance cameras with a baseball bat all while maniacally asking: "What's worse, looking jealous or crazy?" The visual sequence draws heavily on Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist's 1997 installation "Everything Is Over All."

Father John Misty commented that it finds it unbelievable, "when you consider how ridiculous my voice sounds on the demo," that his lyrics ended up "right between picking up the baseball bat and decapitating the fire hydrant."

Asked by HMV.com how his contribution to the song came about, MNEK replied: "My publisher Jon Platt introduced us. She liked what I did and used it and sounded amazing doing it. I was a massive fan of Beyonce growing up so it was an absolute honor."

This won the award for Best Female Video at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. It was one of eight wins for Beyoncé that night.

MNEK is one of 15 credited songwriters. He told BBC the track is essentially a Frankenstein's Monster, stitched together from dozens of demos.

"She played me the chorus," he said. "Then I came back here [to my studio] and recorded all the ideas I had for the song. Beyoncé snipped out the pieces she really liked and the end result was this really great, complete song."

KISS IT BETTER by RIHANNA

Rihanna is addressing a former lover on this R&B power ballad, telling him to stop being so stubborn and just take her back. She knows that like her, he's been hurt by their breakup, so she urges him to swallow his pride and "kiss it better." The song was first previewed in December 2014 on Rihanna's Instagram page.

Rihanna wrote the song with:

American songwriter and producer Jeff Bhasker who has won Grammy Awards for the songs "Run This Town" by Jay-Z, "All of the Lights" by Kanye West, and "We Are Young" by Fun. His other credits include co-writing and co-producing Mark Ronson's smash hit, "Uptown Funk."

British singer-songwriter and actress Teddy Sinclair (real name Natalia Cappuccini), who started her recording career under the name of Verbalicious and released her debut single "Don't Play Nice" in March 2005. The song charted at #11 in the UK singles chart but her then record label later filed for bankruptcy and little was heard from her for a few years. Cappuccini then adopted the stage name Natalia Kills from the interjection "you killed it!", after her record company advised her that her legal name was "indescribable." She released two albums under that name, before reverting to Teddy Sinclair in 2015.

American vocal producer Thaddis "Kuk" Harrell who was a member of a songwriting–production team comprised of himself, Christopher "Tricky" Stewart and Terius "The Dream" Nash. Harrell was the vocal producer and co-writer of Rihanna's Grammy-winning single "Umbrella" and earned another Grammy for the vocal production of Rihanna's "Only Girl (In The World)". His other credits include being a composer and engineer on Beyoncé's chart topping "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)."

Producer/songwriter Glass John, whose other credits include Chris Brown's 2013 single "Home." John caused a stir at the end of 2015 when he took to Twitter on an extended rant about the delay in completing Anti and how Rihanna's alleged boyfriend Travi$ Scott was sabotaging the LP.

John then went on to claim that "Kiss It Better" was supposed to be the album's lead single, tweeting, "ME AND MY WIFE (meaning Rihanna) WENT IN THE STUDIO W/ CLASSIC HIT MAKER @JEFFBHASKER TO CREATW A CLASSIC ANTHEM. And f--king Travis prevented it from being her first $ingle and launching her album last year."

Rihanna was scheduled to perform this song at the Grammy Awards in 2016, but she had to cancel after coming down with bronchitis.

The sultry black-and-white music video was directed by British fashion photographer Craig McDean. It features Rihanna moving around and rolling about in various stages of undress. The singer is literally the only thing in the frame throughout the clip.

McDean, who had previously shot Rihanna for magazines such as T and Vogue, told The Fader that he filmed the video in Los Angeles over a "very long night." McDean added that the inspiration for the clip was based on ideas which were inspired by dadaism and surrealism. "It all comes from you as a person, your inner inspiration and ideas you've had inside for a lifetime," he said.

McDean also spoke about the prominent use of dice that he and creative partner Masha Vayukova incorporated into the video: "Me and Masha watch the same kind of films, we look at a lot of books and art and it all merges together on the set, which is a great playground for visual experiments," he said. "Sometimes it's all about combining things that might not make any sense, [like] subconsciousness and dreams. Dice is such a graphic and surrealistic object so it came into play."

Rihanna recorded the song at Jungle City Studios, New York City and enlisted Extreme's Nuno Bettencourt to play guitar on the track.

MAKE ME by BRITNEY SPEARS

The first single from Britney Spears' ninth studio album finds the songstress with one thing on her mind. Sparks are flying between Spears and her lover and when they go back to her room she coos they will "ignite in the heat of the moment."

The song features some rhymes from rapper G-Eazy. He recalled to KIIS FM in the US. "I got the call when I was in Australia on tour, and they were like, 'Yo, Britney Spears wants you on her single'. I'm like, 'Stop playing.'"

He added: "I got the email and I listened to it and I was like, 'S--t - it's a big record'. So I knocked it out that night."

Spears wrote the song with British singer-songwriter Joe Janiak, who also penned the original version of Ellie Goulding's single "Beating Heart."

The sensual, R&B-infused production was supplied by an English DJ called Burns, whose single "Lies" peaked at #32 on the UK Singles Chart in 2012.

How did Britney first team up with G-Eazy? She explained to Ryan Seacrest: "I worked with an amazing A&R girl, Karen. She got me together with a lot of people - Julia Michaels, a lot of the new up and coming artists. It was her idea - she's very gifted at knowing what sounds good."

The song's music video is a video about the making of the video. (Bear with us). As the sultry slow jam plays, Britney and some friends audition some hot guys for her music clip. Unfortunately, G-Eazy doesn't get to cast for the singer; he's just there on a video screen. The clip was directed by Randee St. Nicholas, who also shot Britney's "Piece Of Me" promo photos.

The video was originally directed by David LaChapelle, who previously shot the clip for Spears' 2004 single "Everytime." Apparently his effort was scrapped by Spears and her team in favour of a less racy concept.

Britney Spears explained the album title to Radio.com: "I decided to call the album Glory because my son was with me through a lot of the process of recording, and he saw me coming home every night and he'd play the songs, and it was his idea," she said. "He just randomly came up with it. It was kind of cool."

Burns recorded the original song in a friend's kitchen back in 2015. After it got picked up by Spears' people, he hit the studio with her for a couple of days to record the vocals. "You think that there might be this diva-ish personality with somebody of that level," he told Billboard magazine of his time spent with the singer, "but she was just so normal, it's crazy."