“For Only Girl (In the World), at the time we were recording that, I was living in this very shitty small town in the South, in the United States, and really fucking hated it. The only kind of good thing about this town was there was a very small lesbian bar, that was open just on Saturdays I think, and they always had a good dance night, and I could walk there basically so I could get really fucking drunk and walk home and not worry about it, so I would go there a whole lot, and then one night I went there and the dance floor was totally empty, there were a lot of people there but no one was dancing, and then the DJ put that song on, and then like all the really super intense butch dykes were on the dance floor all dancing together to that song, and it was the lyrics are “you make me feel like I’m the only girl in the world,” and it was just all of the things: the shitty little town, in the shitty part of the United States, and then this sort of rarified very small lesbian bar, and like butch dykes are a very small specific segment of the queer world with a very specific history, and then this pop song, I’m sure every Rihanna song is like 50 people write it, it’s a song by committee essentially, and even though something that was somewhat sanitized was able to create a very real emotional movement for this marginalized group of people in a marginalized part of the United States, it was very very beautiful to me and it made me hear that song in a totally different way. So, it was as much about wanting to pay tribute to that moment, and to what music can be generally, as much as it was to that song specifically.”
