I think she's good. A bit racey though, and I do think there is a time & place for such things. I heard S&M at a 5th birthday party I attended recently, which was slightly surreal and a bit worrying.

having to hear her alternating spun in, Auto-Tuned vocals every chorus,
I'm not wild about the lyrics coming out of the car radio when I have a
10 & 6 year old on board.

It's a cracking pop song, and the album it's off - "Loud" - is well worth owning. In 2011, it seems to me that guitar music is busying itself about becoming a niche interest, while the Rihannas of the world get on merrily with the core business of being globe-humpingly awesome.

I'm fine with that.

As for the sex stuff, S+M isn't really very shocking, is it? So she's singing about liking being tied up and the pain/pleasure thing. Not exactly a new idea, and I don't see much wrong with pop artists singing unashamedly about sex, regardless of the kink factor. Sexual revolution or not, our societal attitudes to sex are still pretty unhealthy, IMO, and while I'm not in favour of everyone talking about it all the time, why shouldn't a young woman sing about her (real or fictional) peccadilloes? Good luck to her.

In some ways transgressive, but the song was based on a book that was published in 1870.

It's simply that, as we all know, sex sells. S&M is a mighty fine pop tune, but I don't think it would have sold as many copies if it were about the disappointing springtime growth of the wisteria in Rihanna's garden*.

As for Rihanna herself, I'm sure she knows exactly what she's doing. She knows that wearing less clothes and singing about naughty things will make her sell more records - that's the way of the world. She has been behind some fantastic singles over the last two years or so, though.

*not a euphemism, honestly.

I'm more M&S*, than S&M.

*Marks and Spencer, not Master & Servant. Speaking of which, didn't Depeche Mode explore all this stuff in the 80s, too. Didn't turn me into a pervert... Probably.

... apart from Umbrella.

The only thing I know about her is that she was a victim of domestic violence.

Someone, whose face I have seen looking battered in photos, singing songs about S &M though, kind of discomforts me.

I rather suspect that that is partly the point. But I don't need to be comfortable with it.

Unnecessarily explicit in general? I think so. There's a sweeping generalisation for you!

Love the Tinie Tempah record but there are bits where I think to myself "why do you need to say that"...

What does she think about the 50p tax rate? That's what I want to know.

I had to download her latest stuff for her. Personally I'm not a fan, but I did see her perform when I went to the X Factor last year and they staged this really messy food fight for her number. She was impressive.

a hen party in the centre of Brighton last Saturday wearing t-shirts with slogans such as 'I love cock' (not even with a get-out picture of a cockerel) and 'Swallow hard, I'm the head girl', and a stag group with similarly graphic descriptions, I have to say that I'm at a stage of not seeing such matters as 'playful' or 'liberating', but rather as painfully orthodox at best (ie conforming to the 'rules' of pornography), and dangerous at worst. And yes, we're far, far away from the days when Never Mind The Bollocks had to be covered with brown paper in shop windows.

watching Rod do "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" as a young boy with my mum in the 70's. We got through it with some uncomfortable seat shuffling and my mum saying something like "Ooh this is a bit naughty" as Rod did that move that involved grabbing his right bicep with his left hand and thrusting his right fist into the air. I think he may also have been wearing leopard print leggings, I survived.

I like her records a lot but there doesn't need to be such sexualisation in image and lyrics I guess - yet it's nothing new, we've been here before with Madonna and why shouldn't the girls play with these notions just as the boys have been doing in the good old classic rock many of us revere - Sir Mick, Iggy et al.? I suppose the issue is the effect on the very young girl audience these postrels sing for. The whole sexualisation of the young that is the topic du jour. I don't know if there is really a major problem - I think back to Hot Gossip and other smut of old in the charts that did no harm. Perhaps the modern take on it is a bit more bold and raw though - not so much innuendo and titillation, more like a hardcore influence, the inevitable need to carry on where Madonna left off and go further. Or is it really just more of the same? Hard to say.

I suppose we are the country that put My Ding-a-ling at number 1 in 72 after all...

If we think otherwise, separating one from the other as pop increasingly does, then we'll continue to have a nation of young (and not so young)men dressed as tough prison inmates, and young women dressed as sex workers, all appearing to have tough attitude, whilst actually terrified of genuine intimacy.

If your parents were rebels, how do you rebel yourself?

You either up the ante, or go quite conservative. In the case of pop, going quite conservative isn't going to have the oomph of a victim of domestic violence singing about S & M. Have I mentioned that I find that a bit icky?

Sexuality is always a mix of inclination, peer pressure, opportunity and reflecting societal norms. Stag and hen parties in Brighton behave the way that they do because they are stag and hen parties and are susceptible to a different mix of those influences which I suspect, the individuals would not display on their own.

But then again my stag do was a curry followed by a trip to a northern soul club. I guess I'm just quite conservative.

I agree with quite a bit of what's been said, on both "sides" of the debate. All I can say with any certainty is that Beyonce or Rhianna strutting around in a camisole shaking her butt at a camera isn't feminism in any sense that I understand it.

... I cheerfully admit that (see above), and it's tied to this one artist who I genuinely know three things about. She sang Umbrella, was assaulted by Chris Young, and later sung a song about S&M. So I feel rather like a manipulated Nadine Dorries maiden aunt type when it comes to Rhianna, which I don't feel about any other performer. My ickiness is therefore predicated on an ignorance of the work. It's a feeling I get rather than a rational critical response.

As for Fight For This Love, I kind of bolted an Ashley Cole reading onto that, again without hearing it. I'm as susceptible to marketing and gossip pages as anyone else I suppose.

I am not sure arguing about then and now gets us anywhere, though I don't remember metal detectors on schools when I were a lad. I do find the whiff of ageism blowing through Bob and Joe's comments (much as I like B & J a lot) quite disappointing. Why is making sweeping statements about "boomers" any different to making sweeping statements about yoof?

However I am at a loss as to why teaching young girls that they have to look like sex workers to be attractive is a good thing. And don't give me the Pan's People thing. They were about as alluring as news readers.

I can't help thinking that arguing that the sexualisation of pop doesn't have a detrimental effect is just as daft as arguing that it was all a lot better 50 years ago.

Ultimately pop is one contributory influence among many (but an extremely important one) in what is accepted as normal and appropriate. This process of gradual normalisation erodes all sorts of values, and is often A Good Thing (e.g. homophobia is gradually being wiped out and is becoming something of a taboo, when once it would have been homosexuality itself that was taboo).

However, there is always the chance that society starts to perceive something as acceptable simply because of its omnipresence. Swearing is an example: words that were once only heard in conversation are regularly broadcast on TV now, and no one would think anything of effing and blinding immediately after 9pm. As a result these words are losing their power to shock. Possibly a good thing, possibly not - that's a different debate.

But it strikes me that young children singing along to songs about S&M or attempting to adopt the look of their fave under-dressed pop-star normalises that kind of imagery and behaviour at an extremely early age. I can't be the only person who suspects that young boys exposed to endless hip-hop videos (for example) featuring women portrayed as little more than gyrating, be-thonged butts are bound to start to think this is what women do (or - worse - are for). And if that is the case, then it's not much of a leap to imagine that overt sexual imagery and language has comparable effects on young boys and girls.

Thinking about it now, this might really be a reply to Joe's comment that teenagers don't take their cues from pop culture as often as the media says they do. I'd argue they have no choice but to do so much of the time, regardless of whether or not they are aware of it. Or perhaps I'm questioning Bob's suggestion that the influences are no more malign: some influences are better, some are more worrying I should imagine. Or perhaps I'm just rambling when I should be working.

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me

That's the most explicit line in the song. Now obviously context is something, but it's a bit...cartoony isn't it?

I can't help with the fuss surrounding Rihanna lately but be reminded of Madonna....20 years ago...

Her most cartoony (and possibly crappiest) moment had to be Hanky Panky and that whilst being about a much milder form of S&M is far more explicit.

But hey, what do I know? I grew up in a world without any sex, violence or drug-taking, no crime, no murder, nothing of the sort. It was all flowers and love where I grew up.

Hackney, east London in case you were about to ask

she has a voice like a car alarm coupled with the usual post-mtv/post- feminist/post-shame marketing...
few people seem to have latched on to the fact it took the united states thirty years to incorporate pervy synth-pop...

..and trawled through most of it. A few thoughts:
The attempt to make equivalent 'then' and 'now', whether equating Opportunity Knocks and Britain's Got Talent, Larry Parnes and Simon Cowell, or Madonna and Rihanna (or indeed Red Leb and skunk) is flawed because gradually, but then gaining exponential pace in the mid-90s with the notion of 'the market' running the show, mass commodification has changed the way we live. That's not a value judgement, it's just what is. A crude example: I've no idea how much money 'glamour' 'actress' Mary Millington earned, but Katie Price's 'value' is forever being bandied around. Music programmes didn't used to feature graphics citing how many million albums artists had sold, but X Factor does that, in effect introducing those guest acts with the subtext 'the market cannot be wrong, this act must be great'. Newspapers didn't carry figures for box office receipts, now it's a given that they do, and the same goes for the costs of making said films. All those antique programmes on daytime TV, and indeed Antiques Roadshow, are 99% concerned with the money the owners will make. Arthur Negus may have hosted a show called Going For A Song, but the value and worth of the items weren't simply reducible to cash. An antique is good because someone somewhere will pay a fortune for it, not because it's beautiful. Katie Price is respected by many because she's made a whole heap of money.
So everything's for sale, or rather there's more stuff for sale via the 'markets' opening up in tandem with the rise of more TV channels and the 'net, therefore there's more competition to grab the attention of the consumer. And how is that done? Usually by the swiftest means possible, since there's so little time to keep that attention. Hence the need to flag the next TV programme whilst the credits are running, hence the need to name shows so as to leave no doubt as to what they are (I give you 'The World's Tallest Man Looks For Love'). Hence the need to grab by quick hits of sex and violence. In response to the question above, about it being possible for love and sex to be separate, yes, of course they can be. But the trouble is, when the quick hit is required, it's going to be sex that 'wins', rather than the complexities of love, so that's 'the message' that tends to be conveyed.
Having said all that, I'm utterly not a Private Frazer type. I rather like Steven Johnson's book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, particularly its section on the complexities of modern TV drama. And benign commodification can work nicely - as evidenced by this very website. And I've worked a lot with troubled young people, and I'd like to think I've never come away with the disease of generalizing. We're all in this together, after all. As long as the fuckers turned their mobile phones off, that is.