Rihanna, Don’t Stop The Music | Bangerz N Bopz 🔥

In the 51^st edition of Bangerz N Bopz 🔥 (2024), we highlight “Don’t Stop The Music” performed by R&B/pop superstar, Rihanna.  

Bring on the bold, fierce songs! Bangerz N Bopz 🔥 serves up background info and insight into songs of various styles, especially songs that raise eyebrows and stir the pot.  Featured records can be classic or brand new. In the 51st edition of Bangerz N Bopz 🔥 (2024), we break down “Don’t Stop The Music” performed by Rihanna.

Five words: “Please don’t stop the music.” 2007 was a huge year for Rihanna.  That statement is an understatement. The biggest album of her career, Good Girl Gone Bad arrived.  The album featured a crown jewel, a diamond-certified single, “Umbrella”, as well as several multi-platinum songs. The sextuple platinum “Don’t Stop The Music” peaked at no. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2008 (it debuted in December 2007). The StarGate-produced gem received a lift from a famous sample: “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by the late, great Michael Jackson. Specifically, beloved lyrics “Mama-say, mama-sa, ma-ma-ko-ssa” (forgive the spelling) earned RiRi and MJ a lawsuit from Cameroonian musician, Manu Dibango. It is one of the most memorable parts of this dance-pop gem, and MJ’s classic too.

The chorus of “Don’t Stop The Music” is infectious to the nth degree:

“I wanna take you away

Let’s escape into the music, DJ, let it play

I just can’t refuse it

Like the way you do this, keep on rockin’ to it

Please don’t stop the, please don’t stop the music.”

Yeah, more like HELL YEAH! DON’T STOP THAT MUSIC! Thematically, “Don’t Stop The Music” is focused on the dancing… and taking it beyond the dancefloor (“What goes on between us, no one has to know / This is a private show, oh”). Ooh-wee! The ‘beyond’ the dancing is kept suggestive – no bad language or explicitness to be found here.  After all, Good Girl Gone Bad arrived before Rihanna would become edgier with her Rated R phase. To this day, “Don’t Stop The Music” is a dance-pop/contemporary R&B banger that kicks ass and takes names. Keep that music going!

Rihanna // Good Girl Gone Bad // The Island Def Jam Music Group // 2007

Rihanna, Don’t Stop The Music: Bangerz N Bopz 🔥 No. 51 (2024) [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; The Island Def Jam Music Group; cottonbro studio, Harry Shelton, Kool Shooters, Lucas Pazeta, Mavluda Tashbaeva, Teddy Yang, Wesley Souza from Pexels]