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2.30pm
31 March 2008
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Written by: Kanye West, Paul McCartney , Kirby Lauryen, Mike Dean, Ty Dolla $ign, Dave Longstreth, Dallas Austin, Elon Rutberg, Noah Goldstein
Recorded: Early 2014
Producers: Paul McCartney , Kanye West
Additional production: Mike Dean, Dave Longstreth, Noah Goldstein
Vocal production: Kuk Harrell
Released: 24 January 2015
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3.22pm
18 April 2013
Offline It seems kind of ironic that such a bad song has nine writers.
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3.25pm
Members
18 March 2013
Offline ^ That’s how it is nowadays, nearly all Top-40 hits have 5+ writers, which is ridiculous.
My brother and I sing this at random intervals in Rihanna’s silly whiny-voice and Kanye’s tuneless one, it’s quite funny.
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3.40pm
18 April 2013
Offline AppleScruffJunior said
^ That’s how it is nowadays, nearly all Top-40 hits have 5+ writers, which is ridiculous.
My brother and I sing this at random intervals in Rihanna’s silly whiny-voice and Kanye’s tuneless one, it’s quite funny.
LOL. 
"If you're ever in the shit, grab my tit.” —Paul McCartney
5.31pm
27 March 2015
Offline Maybe it’s so bad *because* it has so many writers? In any case, I hate the ‘song’, but then I hate the other Kanye (not) collabs too. I wish Paul would hook up with some proper musicians if he’s so hell bent on working with other artists. There are enough real talents out there. He’s already met Ed Sheeran, for example. Why not work with that bloke? I rather like him.
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8.26am
28 July 2015
Offline Expert Textpert said
It seems kind of ironic that such a bad song has nine writers.
More like a better question is why do you have to have so many damn writers for 1 song?
I’m not a fan of the song itself, but lots of my friends seem to enjoy it. But, one thing I damn HATE is the amount of people that went “Who is Paul McCartney ?” “This is why I love Kanye for shining the light on new artists!”. Like, if you had some decent music education, I’d think you would know who Paul is by now
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Reviewers
Moderators
1 May 2011
Online Its an average song that gets worse on repeated listens. No idea whats meant to be happening with the vocals in the second verse – Kanye cant sing and Rihanna sounds like she’s unknowing been inhaling helium, its beginning to take effect, and she’s surprised and worried at the change.
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10.44am
21 November 2012
Offline Can’t believe this crap has 9 writers! That’s unbelievable! Then again, Girls by Beyonce has about the same amount of writers, I believe, and that’s bad too. I can’t believe so many people were needed to write something that’s so sh*t.
Hire me! I could write something just as s**t on my own!
The vocals in the second verse, when Kanye is singing are ridiculous. WTF is that even?
Anyway, the song itself is average at best.
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11 November 2010
Offline If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably more a matter of a lot of people wanting royalties than nine people actually having written the song.
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1.34am
15 May 2015
Offline The song really needs to be accompanied by watching the video — the insufferably overweening histrionics of Rihanna and Kanye force a visceral reaction in the pit of your stomach which in turn compels the finger to click it off well before its 191 seconds are up. Paul’s presence is the only passable thing about it; but it’s not nearly enough to avert the disaster.
Musically it’s primitive — in a bad way.
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12.28pm
3 November 2015
Offline Does anyone know what FourFive seconds even means? (Or the rest of the song?) It doesn’t make any kind of sense (even less than “I Am The Walrus “). I agree with everyone above–Rihanna’s voice sounds screeching on her higher notes (even she wanted it to sound scathing, it’s being done incorrectly) and I can hear a synthesizer filtering Kanye’s voice. Overall, though, I think it’s a good song, and not just because of Paul’s accompaniment.
What I think is ridiculous is the surprise from people that the song was just voices with a solo acoustic. This is real music! People do this–it isn’t hard or out of the ordinary. I’d like to get some opinions on the pop music scene lately since I haven’t been listening much. Are these songs really doing well? Most of my friends and I just listen to music with actual instruments, but that’s because they have similar tastes as myself. Do people enjoy these techno beats and auto-tuned voices? Songs don’t seem to have the same heartfelt qualities as the older music because a lot of people don’t seem to be as interested in the aesthetic art involved in writing music.
The most important aspect involving this is that the Beatles were the ones who started experimenting with these new inventions in music. Why do we enjoy their “primitive” use of electronic music and voice enhancers but not the ones today? Were they eventually aiming for today’s type of “instrumentation”? If their music was given a chance to continue to evolve, where do you think it would end up?
I’d love to hear everyone’s opinions on this.
Only music can save us.
12.32pm
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1 May 2011
Online Pineapple Records said
The song really needs to be accompanied by watching the video — the insufferably overweening histrionics of Rihanna and Kanye force a visceral reaction in the pit of your stomach which in turn compels the finger to click it off well before its 191 seconds are up. Paul’s presence is the only passable thing about it; but it’s not nearly enough to avert the disaster.Musically it’s primitive — in a bad way.
I dont remember ever seeing the video. That may have been deliberate.
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2.53pm
1 November 2013
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JPM-Fangirl said
He’s already met Ed Sheeran, for example. Why not work with that bloke? I rather like him.
Ed Sheeran is ok but I think Kanye is a better choice in collaborator. Ed’s songs are very calculated and he and is too simaler to Paul’s style so working with Kanye is more of a change.
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3.46pm
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18 March 2013
Offline meanmistermustard said
Pineapple Records said
The song really needs to be accompanied by watching the video — the insufferably overweening histrionics of Rihanna and Kanye force a visceral reaction in the pit of your stomach which in turn compels the finger to click it off well before its 191 seconds are up. Paul’s presence is the only passable thing about it; but it’s not nearly enough to avert the disaster.Musically it’s primitive — in a bad way.
I dont remember ever seeing the video. That may have been deliberate.
From what I can remember, it features Rihanna grabbing herself in various places and threatening to tear her clothes off (no that’s fine Ri-Ri, nobody wants to see it), Kanye trying to dance (actually that might be the best part of the video, he just grabs his crotch repeatedly and tries to do weird Michael Jackson-esque moves but fails repeatedly) and Paul is just in the background strumming away, he does look pretty cool though.
Is it only me who thinks it looks really weirdly edited together? The first time I saw it, I thought they recorded the 3 on different days and just digitally put them together at the end. They never appear to interact with each other or even look at another person- they just continue groping themselves, shaking and strumming (in that order).
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4.40pm
21 November 2012
Offline I wish this song was only four or five seconds long.
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15 February 2015
Offline Wow! What a lot of FourFiveSeconds hate! Poor thread. 
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1.21am
27 March 2015
Offline Annadog40 said
JPM-Fangirl said
He’s already met Ed Sheeran, for example. Why not work with that bloke? I rather like him.Ed Sheeran is ok but I think Kanye is a better choice in collaborator. Ed’s songs are very calculated and he and is too simaler to Paul’s style so working with Kanye is more of a change.
Perhaps, but unlike Kanye, Ed can sing!
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1.25pm
1 November 2013
Offline Expert Textpert said
It seems kind of ironic that such a bad song has nine writers.
What counts as a writer can change like Justin Beiber is counted as a song writer cause he throws shawty or ya sometimes. I think Ringo might of gotten a writing credit for Tomorrow Never Knows if it was written now a days.
1.35pm
3 November 2015
Offline @Starr Shine? Would you say that this overall good, or bad? (I personally think that it can cause misconceptions. It also isn’t fair to the artist who wrote all the words around “shawty” or “ya” and doesn’t get true credit because everyone sees Justin Beiber’s name.)
Speaking of Beiber, have you seen his cover of “Let it Be”? It’s the only work of his I like.
Only music can save us.
1.48pm
1 November 2013
Offline 
The first part I say it’s fine. Two heads are better than one. Paul on his own wasn’t as great as he was when he was working with the other Beatles. The only thing is with more people, more compromises have to be made which is both good and bad.
As his for Let it Be. I liked the music and his voice was alright, I found his voice to be a little weak and he was overshadowed by the music for me.
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