Rihanna’s ‘SOS’ Has Hidden Eighties Song Titles in Lyrics

Grammy award-winning songwriter Evan “Kidd” Bogart recently revealed Rihanna‘s 2006 massive hit track “SOS” hides several Eighties references in plain sight.

During an Oct. 11 interview with Daniel Wall on the Behind the Wall podcast, Bogart discussed the success of the A Girl Like Me lead single, which he said was one of the first pop songs he wrote.

The songwriter, who started his career at Interscope Records and had garnered experience writing rap songs, said that when he wrote the Rihanna track, he “had no idea” what he was doing. “If you really look at how that song is written, it’s not written by anyone who knows anything about pop music,” he explained. “I was going off of instinct. If you look at the verses, they’re crafted with a lot of clever word play and internal rhyme schemes — like a rapper would.”

Bogart added, “The whole second verse of that song is Eighties song titles strung together as sentences because I thought it would be clever.” A closer look at “SOS” reveals references to “Take on Me” by A-ha, including the band’s name and the song’s “take me on” lyric, Cutting Crew’s “(I Just) Died in Your Arms,” “Head Over Heels” by Tears for Fears, Kim Wilde’s “You Keep Me Hanging On,” and “The Way You Make Me Feel” by Michael Jackson.

For reference, on the second verse of “SOS” Rihanna sings: “Take on me (a-ha), you know inside you feel it right/Take me on, I could just die up in your arms tonight/I melt with you, you got me head over heels/Boy, you keep me hangin’ on, the way you make me feel.”

Speaking to Wall, Bogart said that the song also features a sample of another Soft Cell 1981 hit, “Tainted Love.” Notably, Ed Cobb, who wrote the Eighties track, has a writing credit on “SOS.”

The dance smash would become Rihanna’s first Number One hit on the Billboard Hot 100. A Girl Like Me, the singer’s second studio album, also included standout tracks “Unfaithful” and “Break It Off” with Sean Paul.