If rumors come to be true, “World Peace” will be Rihanna’s new song from R8, her new album scheduled for a 2015 release. It has been two years since Unapologetic; therefore, fans were on frenzy when the song supposedly leaked. Judging from the sound of “World Peace,” Rihanna is geared towards global domination with the song. With its club-ready beats and Rihanna’s unmistakable vocals, “World Peace” is on par with Rihanna’s smash hits like “Diamonds” and “We Found Love.”
The most interesting aspect of the song, though, is the evident use of Rihanna’s Barbadian flavors. The tropical feel of “World Peace” easily makes it a candidate as the perfect summer anthem. One can just imagine dancing the song on a beach party, or singing along to Rihanna, as she proclaims, “In a perfect world, there would be no lonely ones.” If Rihanna does release this, she only follows her tradition of coming up with excellent lead singles from her albums.
The leak of the song comes off too as very timely, given that the world experiences so many crises right now. If in case Rihanna decides only to tease us with this, then what great charity “World Peace” is. Albeit on a limited perspective, Rihanna tries to use her influence by singing about how love can change the world for the better.
However, before overrating Rihanna’s attempt at social relevance, listeners should be critical on what the “Unfaithful” singer tries to convey. Instead of empowering the people to do something for the world, she urges them to “keep our hands in the air with no problems and cares.” It’s not actually empowering the powerless. It’s teaching them to be apathetic in the face of adversity. It may be too much to expect Rihanna to sing about selflessness to address deeply rooted social dilemmas, but what good start “World Peace” is. Finally, Rihanna sings more than mere sexual pleasure, selfish desires and self-gratification.
Having said this, Rihanna’s “World Peace” is not a bad song, after all. It actually has a great potential to be an anthem, as well as the capacity to climb the top of the charts worldwide. However, for the sake of actual world peace, we should collectively urge Rihanna not to give us some poorly conceptualized, sexually charged music video for this. If Rihanna releases this, she can take cue on how Christina Aguilera used a rather sex-in-the-club-themed song that is “Let There Be Love” productively.