March 17, 2008

Rihanna Chooses 'Take A Bow,' Penned By Ne-Yo, To Kick Off Good Girl Gone Bad Re-Release

By Jayson Rodriguez, with additional reporting by Shaheem Reid (MTV.com)

"Don't Stop the Music" is the name of Rihanna's current single, but the title could easily serve as her mantra these days too. The Def Jam star just released the fifth single from her Good Girl Gone Bad album on Friday (March 14), a melancholy ballad titled "Take a Bow," penned by labelmate Ne-Yo.

The track is set to be featured on a re-released edition of her platinum-selling third album, which has already spawned the singles "Umbrella," "Shut Up and Drive" and "Hate That I Love You."

The bulked-up version of Good Girl Gone Bad is due May 27, a representative for Def Jam Records told MTV News.

Over soft, driving piano keys, Rihanna sings about breaking up with a lying and cheating boyfriend on "Take a Bow." She calls his act "quite a show" and "entertaining" - so much so that he should take a bow for his performance.

"Talking about, 'Girl I love you, you're the one,' " she sings. "This just looks like a rerun/ Please, what else is on?/ And don't tell me you're sorry, 'cause you're not/ Baby, when I know you're only sorry 'cause you got caught."

Ne-Yo, who also wrote and was featured on Rihanna's hit "Hate That I Love You," had a track of his own leak to the Internet this week.

The uptempo "Closer" is a synthy, percolating number with Ne-Yo singing about being drawn to a lucky lady. A representative for Ne-Yo's Compound Entertainment label confirmed that the song is the first single from his next album.

The song has more of a dance appeal than any of the Grammy winner's previous works. In an interview with MTV News recently, Ne-Yo said he was just starting to work on his third album.

"I'm just figuring out where I want to go," he said. "Me being an artist, I can't do the same [thing] two, three and four times. I have to find the next thing. That's the current battle: trying to figure where to go now. I know I want to do R&B, but at the same time, I want to be the kind of artist that can do a duet with a John Mayer and [have] it make sense.

"I have no idea [how it's going to sound]," Ne-Yo added. "But figuring it out is gonna be fun."