Chuck Harmony had a self-fulfilling prophecy with Rihanna‘s “Russian Roulette.” Before getting the call to work with Rihanna, the songwriter/producer already had an impressive resume of prior clients including Celine Dion, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, John Legend, and Ne-Yo. Harmony and Ne-Yo teamed up to write “Russian Roulette,” the lead single off Rihanna’s 2009 album, Rated R. It was the first in the wake of her highly public domestic violence case with then-boyfriend Chris Brown.
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Going into the studio, Harmony was in tune with where Rihanna was at in her journey and wrote accordingly. The result is a dark pop ballad wherein a woman finds herself caught up in a sinister game of Russian roulette. And you can see my heart, beating / You can see it through my chest / Said I’m terrified but I’m not leaving / I know that I must pass this test / So just pull the trigger, she sings. Below, Harmony takes American Songwriter through the journey of “Russian Roulette.”
The Story Behind “Russian Roulette”
“There’s the physical answer and then there’s the spiritual answer,” Harmony says. “The spiritual answer was I was on a plane with this guy and he was like, ‘I gotta play you this new Rihanna song. It’s going to change the game. It’s the best song I’ve ever heard.’ And it was the song ‘Umbrella.’ I’d never heard it. He played it and it was so good that it made me mad. After he played it I was like, ‘Next time, I’m gonna have her first single.’ Her next album after she went through the dark spots with Chris Brown was Rated R and I had her first single with ‘Russian Roulette.’
“But the physical answer is literally I got a call from Ne-Yo. He was like, ‘I got a session with Rihanna, you want to do it with me?'” he continues. “So I flew in that day and I had nothing to play because my hard drive had crashed, so all my tracks that I pre-made for the session, I didn’t have them. So I had a few hours before Ne-Yo was about to get in to write this song and I made the track for ‘Russian Roulette.’
“You always feel privileged to just land on the album because everybody is working,” Harmony adds. “You go to any studio in LA, New York, Atlanta, everybody’s working on Rihanna’s album. So to land it was one thing, but to get the single was really validating because out of everybody, the vision that I had connected with her so much that she wanted to put this out first. I had one shot and that was the shot I took. I felt like she was gonna go a little dark. I felt like she was gonna be introspective. And so I took that shot—it worked.”
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