Rihanna, Chris MartinIt's hard not to love Rihanna and Chris Brown's "Birthday Cake." It thrives on explosive, sexual energy. The party hand claps compliment the sound effects of racing lasers, and the wrong-ness of the stars of the most publicized fallout of the last 10 years reuniting on record to recount their carnal past is a part of the song's guilty pleasure appeal.
Considering their domestic violence backstory, it would have been cooler if Rihanna and Chris Brown had taken the path Rihanna did with Coldplay on "Princess Of China." In the song from British band's "Mylo Xyloto" album, Chris Martin and Rihanna sing about a relationship gone bad.
"I could've been a princess, you'd be a king. Could've had a castle, and wore a ring. But noooo, you let me goooo!" Rihanna sings.
The song's music video tells the story even more tastefully. Capturing the China theme, the "Princess" video was filmed at Taiko Center in Los Angeles and showcases the singers dressed as ninjas. During the first half of the video, Rihanna and Martin portray a happy couple, but when heartache sets in out come the swords.
Instead of focusing on the drama, "Princess" manages to stress the love lost, especially in one scene where Rihanna and Martin share an emotional embrace after things fall apart.
Rihanna Tweeted her support of the clip. "@coldplay I loooove this sh-t! Thanks for the opportunity."
Martin said the song was written with Rihanna in mind. "In like a dream scenario, we had a song that'd secretly kind of written to see if Rihanna would want to sing it," he told MTV last fall.
Martin had to convince the group to use a featured artist on the track. "And then the rest of the band wanted to keep it, so we came up with the idea of asking her to sing it with us, and, to our great surprise, she said okay," he said.