Rihanna - Good Girl Gone Bad

So far, Rihanna was an average artist with a lot of potential but still not quite up there, although a couple of excellent songs ("Pon De Replay" and the Soft-Cell-based "SOS") maintained our hopes and kept us interested. That was all not in vain, as she's finally managed to meet everything that we expected from her (and some more). Any doubts? Just multiply those two songs by a whole album and you get a wet dream of pop-music-heaven proportions called "Good Girl Gone Bad": a kaleidoscopic mixture of styles (still mainly r&b, but also electro, soul, rock, club music, hip-hop...), touching everything with a fresh, energetic and even slightly experimental approach. The result is so effective that we end up with something so contagious, fun and colorful as only pop music at its best moments could be. Not afraid to be excessive (musically and also lyric-wise), there's always a multitude of details in every song that manages to take us by surprise, so much so that even the usually sloppy mid-tempo moments make a whole lot of sense in here. With 12 full-bodied and overwhelming songs the result could only be one: 46 minutes of pure addictive pop-transcendence. Beyoncé and Justin, watch your backs. (8/10)

n.d.: for the best and funniest review of the year so far, have a look at Popjustice's text for "Good Girl Gone Bad" here. It's called "100 things less brilliant than the new rihanna album" and it includes things like trees, dogs, cars, beaches, haircuts or shower curtains...