Rihanna‘s “SOS” is one of the defining songs of the mid-2000s, but as it turns out, the track actually got a huge lift from the 1980s.
In a new clip posted Tuesday from a recent interview with Behind the Wall, songwriter Evan “Kidd” Bogart — who composed the song’s lyrics with Edward Cobb and Jonathan Rotem — revealed an Easter egg hidden in the 2006 hit’s second verse that he says has gone unnoticed by listeners for nearly 20 years.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” he recalled to host Daniel Wall. “The whole second verse of that song is ’80s song titles strung together as sentences, because I thought it would be super clever.”
Bogart went on to outline exactly how each lyric corresponds to a song title, starting with “Take on me, ah-hah,” a reference to 1985 smash “Take On Me” by — wait for it — the band A-ha. Rih then sings “I could just die up in your arms tonight” on the track, which matches up with Cutting Crew’s 1986 banger “(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight,” followed by “I melt with you,” which doubles as the word-for-word title of Modern English’s 1982 track.
Other song titles featured in the verse include 1985’s “Head Over Heels” by Tears for Fears, 1986’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by Kim Wilde and 1987’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” by Michael Jackson. Observe as Rih sings on “SOS”: “You got me head over heels/ Boy, you keep me hanging on, the way you make me feel.”
As Bogart also pointed out, many of those hidden songs were Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits — another fitting detail considering “SOS” earned Rihanna her very first of 14 total No. 1s (so far) on the chart: “Take On Me,” “(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight” and “The Way You Make Me Feel” all reached the chart’s summit.
Watch Bogart break down the second verse of “SOS” below.
