We Found Love
by Rihanna (featuring Calvin Harris)

Album: Talk That Talk (2011)
Charted: 1 1
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This upbeat dance song is the sound of youthful adventure when the world is turning at light speed and, out of nowhere, you've found someone and made a deep connection.

    The song certainly connected with listeners. It spent 10 weeks at #1 in America and topped the charts in most countries where it was released. It was also the most-played song on US airwaves in 2012, followed by Flo Rida's "Good Feeling" and The Wanted's "Glad You Came."
  • "We Found Love" was written and produced by the Scottish electro-pop producer and DJ Calvin Harris. He's not known as a lyricist, but he stumbled onto a powerful sentiment with the line "we found love in a hopeless place." He says it doesn't mean anything in particular.

    "It could have been Jumpin Jaks in Dumfries," he told Q magazine. "I don't know exactly what I was thinking about. I was just playing the song and doing nonsense singing to see if the syllables fitted the song. It was like that. I was singing nonsense and that's how the lyrics happened."
  • There's a good chance this song is floating around on your hard drive somewhere. Digital downloading was the top music format at the time, and "We Found Love" sold 9 million of them. It was released as the lead single from Rihanna's sixth album, Talk That Talk, on September 22, 2011.
  • Calvin Harris was best known for his work with Dizzee Rascal, Kelis and Kylie Minogue. He wasn't well known in America, but was big in the UK, where he had a series of Top 10 singles under his own name, including the chart-topping "I'm Not Alone," which was later sampled by Chris Brown on his own hit "Yeah 3x." He and Rihanna connected when he was the support act on the Australian leg of her tour. She asked him to write a song for her Talk That Talk album, and after she turned down several attempts by the Scottish electro wiz, she finally agreed to record this track.
  • Social media was maturing by this point, and Rihanna dominated it, especially on Facebook and Twitter. Her fans had coalesced in her "Navy," a name derived from a lyric in her 2009 song "G4L" that goes, "We a army, better yet a navy."

    The Navy drummed up anticipation for this song and put Calvin Harris on notice. "It was crazy all the fans on Twitter, tweeting me saying: 'The song better not be rubbish' before they heard it," he told London's Capital FM. "There were some mild threatening nature to them, but it's all part of the fun. She sounds great on it."

    After the song was released and the Navy were satisfied, Harris tweeted: "Wowow many good comments about song with @Rihanna so happy u like it, i told u she sounded like an angel! THanks #RihannaNavy !! :D"

    Yeah, Twitter grammar used to be even worse.
  • The music video is a very visceral interpretation of the song - it looks more like an episode of Euphoria than a pop video. We see Rihanna as addicted to both her lover and to drugs, and she and her beau end up abusing each other. Rihanna was herself a victim of abuse; in 2009 her boyfriend Chris Brown assaulted her.

    The video didn't go over well with some anti-rape campaigners, who questioned the message it sent to impressionable fans. Eileen Kelly of the Rape Crisis Centre told Britain's Daily Star, "Rihanna's new video is a disgrace. It sends the message that she is an object to be possessed by men, which is disturbingly what we see in real violence cases."

    Most fans disagreed, finding the video artistic and compelling.
  • Rihanna's love interest in the video is played by model and former boxer Dudley O'Shaughnessy. According to insiders, she had seen his modeling shots and other pictures when he was a boxer and handpicked him for the role. Calvin Harris also makes a brief cameo appearance during the party scene in a muddy field, popping up behind the decks.
  • The video was directed by Melina Matsoukas, who also helmed Rihanna's "Rude Boy" and the controversial "S&M." Matsoukas explained to MTV News that the video is not intended to refer back to the singer's past experiences with domestic violence, but rather it's a warning about the dangers of addiction.

    "[The song's] totally rave-y... and that's the feeling, just music rushing over you, and then I started thinking about drugs and addiction and love and how that's an addiction," she explained. "We've all lived the ups and downs of being in a toxic relationship. It's really about the obstacles of trying to let it go, but at the same time how great it makes you feel, so it's hard to let it go."
  • Rihanna was just 23 when "We Found Love" became her 11th #1 hit. It was also her 20th Top 10 entry, her first being "Pon De Replay," which arrived in the top tier in June 2005. This six-year string of hits was rivaled only by Madonna's run from 1983-1989.
  • The song kicks right in with the beat, but the music video needed a softer setup, so it opens with a spoken-word section over some piano notes as we see Rihanna and Dudley O'Shaughnessy in some very intimate moments. This part was voiced by the British model Agyness Deyn, who reads these lines:

    "It's like you're screaming, and no one can hear. You almost feel ashamed that someone could be that important, that without them you feel like nothing. No one will ever understand how much it hurts. You feel hopeless, like nothing can save you. And when it's over and it's gone, you almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back so that you could have the good."
  • Part of the music video was shot in a field in the Northern Irish town of Bangor on September 26 and 27, 2011. The farmer who owned the land on which Rihanna was filming was shocked to have spotted the Bajan beauty half naked when he was walking to his tractor. He told BBC News: "I thought it was inappropriate. I requested them to stop and they did. I had my conversation with Rihanna and I hope she understands where I'm coming from. We shook hands." After being asked to leave the field, the singer continued to shoot the promo in Belfast.
  • This was Rihanna's sixth British #1, which has been spread over five consecutive years, a record unequalled by any other female solo artist. The Bajan singer had previously scored chart-toppers with "Umbrella," "Take a Bow, "Run This Town," "Only Girl (In The World)" and "What's My Name?" between 2007 and January 2011.
  • "We Found Love" was in its sixth week at #1 in the UK when Talk That Talk topped the UK albums chart. Rihanna held these top spots simultaneously earlier in 2011 with "What's My Name" and Loud, making her the first female artist to double twice in the same year with different singles and albums.
  • Gauged by number of weeks at #1 in America, this is Rihanna's biggest hit, but "Umbrella," with seven weeks at #1, endures as her most popular song.
  • During the song's tenth week at #1 on the Hot 100, Rihanna also claimed the #100 spot with "Talk That Talk," thus bookending the chart. The previous time this happened was on March 1, 2008 when Flo Rida's "Low" topped the chart while "Elevator" was placed at #100.
  • Actor James Franco was asked to play Rihanna's boyfriend in the video before Dudley O'Shaughnessy took on the role. Franco told MTV News: "She actually asked me to be in that video, the one with the relationship that gets crazy. I couldn't do it. But, I guess, I hope that that means there's mutual love between us."
  • The opening line, "yellow diamonds in the light," portended "Diamonds," the lead single from Rihanna's next album, Unapologetic.
  • The song topped the US Hot Dance Club Songs for two consecutive weeks, the only track to remain at #1 on that chart for more than one week in 2011.
  • Rihanna and Calvin Harris performed this song at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards, where it won for Video Of The Year.
  • According to the British singer Leona Lewis, she was offered this song but turned it down in favor of her single "Trouble." Lewis told The Daily Star Sunday: "I worked with Calvin and we recorded 'We Found Love.' But he went touring with Rihanna and she ended up releasing it."

    "I didn't commit to it because I wanted 'Trouble' to be my first single," she added, "so I think that was another reason they went with Rihanna. It was the same version and production but mine's better."
  • Nicole Scherzinger claims that she also turned down the song. "I passed on 'We Found Love.' I got the demo of that song and I was busy at the time," she revealed to Notion magazine. "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.' That was my fault. I slept on it."
  • Part of the promotion for this song involved a cover story in Esquire magazine, which named Rihanna "Sexiest Woman Alive." The previous year, People declared her "World's Most Beautiful Woman." Maxim was less impressed: they bumped her down to #22 on their Hot 100 list in 2011 after placing her at #6 in 2010.
  • Rihanna sang this during her Super Bowl halftime show performance in 2023 at Glendale, Arizona. As she started the song, fireworks went off outside the stadium, providing a striking visual as she sang astride a bevy of acrobatic dancers. Rihanna's choreography was far more subdued, and we found out why later: she was pregnant with her second child.

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