Singer/songwriter Taio Cruz has confirmed that ‘Umbrella’ was offered to Mary J Blige and Britney Spears before Rihanna turned it into a worldwide hit.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Cruz said: “They [Spears’s representatives] sent it back saying it didn’t work for her.”
Mary J Blige recently claimed she turned the track down because it was too mainstream.
Cruz, whose friend Christopher ‘Tricky’ Stewart co-wrote the song, attributed its success to the shrinking attention spans of music fans.
“The audience can be distracted quite easily, so you want something they can sing along with immediately,” he said.
“[It’s] so simple, it’s like a playground chant. If you look at the most successful songs, they are choruses of four of five words, three notes, repeated. It’s not rocket science.”