Songfacts®:

• In this song, Rihanna has an intimate encounter with an alluring woman who tells her, "te amo," which she's pretty sure means "I love you" (it does). For the rest of the song, Rihanna tries to decide how far she's willing to go with it, as her heart and mind do a push-and-pull. It's all the more mysterious because this lady is speaking to her in Spanish.
• Rihanna released a lot of music from 2005-2012, when she put out seven albums and did a bunch of collaborations. This song came in the middle of that run, included on her fourth album, Rated R. The song is a paean to her international audience and released as a single in many countries outside the US. She was always mixing up her musical flavors, so it was only a matter of time before she did a song in Spanglish. Her lyrical themes were also constantly in flux, and here she mixes things up by making her love interest a woman.
• "Te Amo" is one of Rihanna's many collaborations with the Norwegian production duo Stargate, who also supplied the tracks for her hits "Take A Bow" and "Hate That I Love You." Rihanna wrote the lyrics with James Fauntleroy, a songwriter who worked on six tracks from Rated R. The Spanish guitar is by a Norwegian named Bernt Rune Stray.
• The steamy music video was shot on April 29 and 30, 2010, at Vigny, France in the Château de Vigny and was directed by Anthony Mandler. The French supermodel Laetitia Casta plays the femme fatale.