“You want a hit? Give me an hour, plus a pen and a pad.” That was LL Cool J back in ’87. Things have changed since then — especially when it comes to hits. For Rihanna, hits take well under an hour to construct. Proof: her 2012 chart-topping song “Diamonds” took only 14 minutes to write — according to the song’s writer, Sia Furler. Hit the jump for more info.
In 2012, producer Benny Blanco told HuffPost in an interview that the track happened overnight.
“We’re sitting there trying to make records, and we finally just said, ‘Let’s just do something we like. Let’s make a hip-hop record with some really cool chords on it,'” he recalled. “It didn’t sound Rihanna at all. We were more thinking of making a record that sounds like Kanye. Let’s make a record with a dope beat. So we did. Then Sia heard the track and instantly gravitated towards it. We weren’t even thinking of putting a pop song on it, but she wrote this amazing song.”
As far as Furler writing the song in under 15 minutes, Blanco added “That’s insane.” Especially considering that Rihanna used Furler’s demo vocal as a guide, hewing to her inflections exactly, according to NY Times.
