Fire Is Hot: “Livin’ A Lie”

(Fire Is Hot spotlights new and hot things. It will recur.)

Team the hottest singer/songwriter from the past year, The Dream, with the songstress, Rihanna, who vaulted his biggest meal ticket, “Umbrella,” to the top of the charts, and, in “Livin’ A Lie,” you get a song, in theory, destined for greatness.

This one’s more than theory, though. The supple bass, catchy rhythm, and echoing synths make it both all -encompassing and warm at the same time; the production’s tremendous, but, for once, it doesn’t need to offset Rihanna’s singing. The no-man’s-land of covert action is relationship ground she’s covered before, with mixed results (“Unfaithful,” “Hate That I Love You”), but she’s seemingly genuinely hurting and yearning here, and her counterpart responds in kind (“I wanna hop on the first thing smokin’/Tell our agent to book us a plane,” goes one call-and-response), as the duet soars to Shakespearean heights for the apparently star-crossed lovers. And if the island girl is good, The Dream is better: this is a masterstroke of songwriting, neither too saccharine nor overwrought, and he croons it perfectly, smooth butter to the lady’s rising, breathless delivery. If it’s released as a single, write this down: this is the song of the summer of 2008.

The Dream ft. Rihanna: Livin’ A Lie

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~ by Andy Hutchins on December 10, 2007.