The Sound Seminar (Music Appreciation Group) – Free

Think of Sound Seminar as a book club for an artist’s full discography where we pick one artist and spend three months exploring their career through their contributions to music and their cultural impact. This month we’ll look at Rihanna and her first four albums: Music of the Sun, A Girl Like Me, Good Girl Gone Bad, and Rated R. Come ready to discuss and engage! “Making Rihanna” — WBEZ Chicago (2022, 43 min). Features Evan Rogers (the producer who discovered her in Barbados), a Vogue editor, and a music journalist, and includes archival tape of early rehearsals. https://www.wbez.org/making/2022/10/20/making-rihanna-a-podcast-biography Rihanna Talks ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ — MTV News throwback clip from 2007, in her own words about the album’s direction and title. youtube.com/watch?v=-izPcp19qPg 2009 Rihanna — Rated R Interview and Rihanna MySpace Music Release Interview (Dec 2009) — both available on YouTube, filmed around the Rated R release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP2H0HyD1uA Interview Magazine — covers her evolution across all four albums, including Rihanna in her own words: “in the beginning of my career, I didn’t have a lot of input in what I wore and stuff, but it was a very innocent, girly look”. interviewmagazine.com/music/rihanna “Good Girl Gone Bad: 10 Years of Pop Influence” — strong piece on the cultural significance of the pivot, including her MTV quote about cutting her hair and taking control. https://www.vibe.com/features/opinion/rihanna-good-girl-gone-bad-10-year-anniversary-515931/ “Revisiting Rihanna’s Rated R: A Renaissance Era” — deep dive into Rated R as her first album as executive producer, and the personal context behind it. https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/rihanna-rated-r-era/ “Good Girl Gone Bad — Charting Rihanna’s Daring Transformation” — traces the shift from the Caribbean sound of her first two albums to the sleek pop of GGGB. https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/rihanna-good-girl-gone-bad/