This grungy party anthem dedicated to a night on the town is part of Rihanna's fifth studio album, Loud. The song had a working title of "Drink It Up."
Bet you didn't think Avril Lavigne would be sampled anytime soon, but this track samples Lavigne's 2002 ballad "
I'm With You," using her "yeah, yeah" vocals as the hook.
Because of the sample, Lavigne gets a writing credit on "Cheers" along with the other three writers of "I'm With You" - Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards, and Scott Spock (all members of the song's production team, The Matrix). Another Lavigne connection, another song on the album is called "
Complicated," the same title of
Avril's first hit.
Rihanna told Spin magazine: "It's a song you would hear in a bar but I think you could also hear it all over pop radio. It's really grungy and melodic and catchy. And the way the producers sampled Avril - it's like she's an instrument. It's really cool how they combined [the song] with her vocals."
The songwriters Stacy Barthe and Laura Pergolizzi came up with the lyrics and vocal melody along with Rihanna, who is also credited as a writer. It was produced by The Runners - the team of Andrew Harr and Jermaine Jackson (not Michael's brother) - who also are credited as writers. Another writer, Corey Gibson, also worked on the track (we're guessing on the chorus, as his nickname is Corey "Chorus" Gibson).
Stacy Barthe and Laura Pergolizzi are solo artists as well as songwriters. Barthe also co-wrote Beyoncé's "
Brown Skin Girl" and Miley Cyrus' "
Adore You." Pergolizzi landed her first placement with Backstreet Boys: the 2007 track "Love Will Keep You Up All Night." Under the name LP, she had a huge international hit in 2015 with "
Lost On You."
Rihanna told MTV News about this tune: "I love that song. That is one of my favorite songs on the album. It makes you feel like celebrating. It gives you a great feeling inside like you want to go out and have a drink. People can't wait for the weekend."
Rihanna added that though her busy schedule doesn't really warrant her having the weekend off, she still loves them. "I work all weekend, but I still can't wait. I still get excited about it being Friday, even though I'm not getting the weekend off," she explained.
"I got to be up at 5 a.m. on Saturday anyway. I just like the fact that it's Friday. It's just something that became a habit, so you get that feeling Friday night [and] it doesn't matter what time you have to wake up on Saturday. You want to get excited about the weekend, you want to go out and have a drink with your girls, who have the weekend off."
Rihanna told MTV News why the decision was made to sample Lavigne, rather than getting the Canadian pop singer to come in and re-record the vocal for the song. "I asked the same thing, but when I heard the track, it was already embedded in the music, so the producers already had it that way," she explained. "But it wouldn't have made a difference. It would have sounded the same. But I'm just glad that we could use her sample, because it became such a huge part of the instrumental that if it were not to be in the song, it would change the whole vibe of the song."
Rihanna told Q magazine the "don't let the bastards get you down" refrain of this song is a riposte to, you guessed it, bastards. "There are always haters saying I'm too this and that. Bastards in the media. Bastards on the internet," she complained.
The song's music video was directed by SRP Records founder Evan Rogers (who
discovered Rihanna), and Ciara Pardo. It features footage from Rihanna's Loud Tour concert in Kensington Oval, Barbados, on August 5, 2011. Avril Lavigne is seen raising her glass to the camera before being pushed into a swimming pool on a skateboard. Jay-Z, Kanye West and Cee Lo Green also make cameo appearances as all three performed on certain dates during Rihanna's tour.
Counting the four writers credited for the sample, the total number of writers on this track is 10, which seriously dilutes the royalties but is the cost of doing business for pop songwriters. One of the track's writers, Laura Pergolizzi, weighed in, telling Songfacts, "You have to take it on the chin sometimes."
As for how she got involved with the song, Pergolizzi told The Independent: "Getting a Rihanna song was nuts. I was invited to a session by my friend, we wrote the song in a few hours. I feel like emotional content is the most important of any song, for any artist."
"Every artist wants to connect with the listener," she continued. "But it's a daunting task to walk into a room full of strangers and write something from the heart."
Pergolizzi added that while Rihanna added some of her "Rihanna-isms" at certain points, the final version of "Cheers (Drink to That)" was essentially the same as the demo she recorded.
