Here's the music video that angered the farmers of Ireland, Rihanna's "We Found Love." And it's easy to see why the Irish were angry when the singer came in contact with their crops: Rihanna spends the whole video in various states of undress, doing drugs, and dancing up a storm. It's as though she's using all her time on the tour bus rewatching Trainspotting, Go, and Requiem for a Dream on a constant loop. This "hopeless place" that Rihanna keeps singing about appears to be a rave, or the Electric Daisy Carnival, or some location where eyes dilate constantly, multi-colored pills are consumed like Skittles, and cigarettes burn down into rainbow ashes.
Still, it works: The song is a perfect soundtrack for this moving portrait of Europe's MDMA culture, from the quick edits to the bleached-out film stock to screen projections Rihanna often sings in front of. The fun ends for one scene, though, when Rihanna and her drug buddy, played by someone who looks exactly like Chris Brown, are arguing in a car to the point where it looks like things are about to get physical. That scene mirrors the real life incident where Brown assaulted Rihanna, and it's a creepy moment in the middle of the party.
Those bikes-and-fireworks scenes at the beginning of "We Found Love" are ripped from Richard Ayoade's remarkable film Submarine, and we only mention this because Rihanna, like Beyonce, has a reputation for stealing other people's art for her music videos. In fact, RiRi's "S&M" video borrowed so much from the work of photographer David LaChapelle that he sued the singer for $1 million. So it's fitting that, on the day that "We Found Love" arrives, the BBC is reporting that Rihanna and LaChapelle have settled their lawsuit, and that the photographer is "happy" with the undisclosed sum.