I remember, vividly, waiting up one night in early 2016 to listen to Work, the first single from Rihanna’s eighth album, Anti. I was expecting some kind of supreme banger – a hit of equivalent euphoria to songs like We Found Love or Only Girl in the World. When I heard the song, I couldn’t help but feel that it was a little soft – a sad, surprisingly elliptical return. I filed it away under “sub-par Rihanna songs” only for it to work its way into my heart over the next few months; now it’s one of my favourite pop songs ever and a clear precedent for a wave of pop stars intent on singing about the quotidian drudgery of celebrity. (It also contains one of the most perfect pop lyrics – “Nobody text me in a crisis.”)
