小雨伞 (2007)

"Umbrella" is a song by Barbadian singer Rihanna, released worldwide on March 29, 2007, by Def Jam Recordings, as the lead single and opening track from her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007). It features a guest performance from the singer's mentor and Def Jam-label boss Jay-Z, who co-wrote the song alongside American singer the-Dream. Its producers, Tricky Stewart and Kuk Harrell, also received songwriting credits.

"Umbrella" was met with universal acclaim upon release and was a global commercial success, topping the charts in 19 countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the UK, where the song's chart performance coincided with prolonged rain and flooding, it was one of the most played songs on radio in the 2000s. It managed to remain atop the UK Singles Chart for 10 consecutive weeks, the longest run at number one for any single of that decade, and is also one of the few songs to top the chart for at least 10 weeks. As one of the highest digital debuts in the United States at the time, it remained atop of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks.

The single's accompanying music video, directed by Chris Applebaum and featuring Rihanna's nude body covered in silver paint, earned her a Video of the Year at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards and Most Watched Video on MuchMusic.com at MuchMusic Video Awards. "Umbrella" has been covered by several notable performers across various musical genres, including All Time Low, the Baseballs, Train, Manic Street Preachers, McFly, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, OneRepublic, Taylor Swift, and Vanilla Sky. Rihanna performed the song at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards and at the 2008 BRIT Awards, and also included it as the closing number of the Good Girl Gone Bad Tour (2008), the Last Girl on Earth (2010), and the Loud Tour (2011) as well as in the Diamonds World Tour (2013), and the Anti World Tour (2016). In 2021, Rolling Stone ranked "Umbrella" #332 on their revised list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Background and development

American songwriter and producer Christopher "Tricky" Stewart convened with Terius "The-Dream" Nash and Kuk Harrell in January 2007 at the Atlanta-based Triangle Studios to create new material. In the studio, Stewart was "messing around with a walloping hi-hat sound", which he found in GarageBand. With his attention caught by the sound, Nash asked Stewart what he was doing: "Oh, my Gosh, what is that beat?". When Stewart incorporated chords onto the hi-hat, "immediately the word popped into [Nash's] head"; he went to the vocal booth and started singing. Nash wrote the first two verses and the chorus over Stewart's skeleton track. They quickly wrote the lyrics, completing the first verse in 60 seconds. They continued into writing, adding the hook while "[Stewart] would put the next chord". In a matter of hours, they had recorded a demo of the track. The song was written with American pop singer Britney Spears in mind, whom Stewart had previously worked with on her 2003 single "Me Against the Music". Stewart and Nash thought that Spears, who had "her personal life ... a little out of control" at the time, needed a hit as a musical comeback. Spears was working on her fifth album, Blackout, so they sent a copy of the demo to Spears' management. However, Spears did not hear of the song because her label at the time, Jive rejected it, claiming they had enough songs for her to record.