“We Found Love” by Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris

An absolute unit of a pop hit, a defining track for both Rihanna and the 2010s EDM craze.

It’s not like Rihanna’s career needed a boost circa 2011. In 2010 alone, she either sang the hook or took the lead on five singles that eventually hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 before “We Found Love” saw the light of day. But, even with runaway smashes like “Only Girl (In The World)” and “S&M” to her name, it’s safe to say her collaboration with Calvin Harris, then primarily known as UK rave royalty, took both their careers—and the North American EDM craze—to a completely different level.

If you weren’t in the middle of your party phase when this song was skyrocketing up the charts, it’s difficult to appreciate how universally loved it was. Harris and Rihanna tapped into house and synth-pop history to arguably push an entire genre into the mainstream consciousness. On this and several other fronts, it’s similar to the Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars game-changer, “Uptown Funk.” Both producers probably would’ve had a hit with the instrumentals, regardless of who the singers were. However, like Mars, Rihanna’s voice has such a presence, even when she sounds like she’s mailing in her vocals. You can count on one hand the number of pop stars who can turn a demo into a world-conquering hit just by showing up, and she’s on that list. The sum of all those parts, those instantly recognizable intro chords to the epic, euphoric crescendo, is an undeniably timeless party track. In nearly 15 years as a working DJ, no song changed the dynamic of dancefloors like this one.

Interestingly, Rihanna nearly wasn’t the voice you hear on “We Found Love.” One-time star Leona Lewis, of “Bleeding Love” fame, was the first to record a demo over the beat, but a dispute over what should be released as the lead single to her then-forthcoming album put her version on the shelf. Once Harris and Rihanna found themselves on tour together, she took the instrumental for a spin, and the rest, as they say, is history. The song topped the pop charts in 25 countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It stayed at No. 1 in the US for 10 consecutive weeks and is now one of the country’s most successful pop songs of all time, a fact that must still grind Lewis’s gears.

Such is life.