Even before Rihanna got the shit kicked out of her by Chris Brown, “Disturbia” was a terrific pop song. I didn’t know who she was until last year when, driving down some highway in Florida, “Disturbia” came on and I found myself singing along in falsetto despite the fact that I didn’t know the words and was having a totally depressing vacation. The next day, while sitting with my ailing grandmother, I excused myself to look out the window and willfully submitted to the bum bum be-dum bum bum be-dum bum clawing out my brain.

Put simply, “Disturbia” is catchy as hell. Rihanna’s voice is iconic, singing with sugary auto-tune permanently on, and managing to make even the most ridiculous lyrics sound passionate. Who else could sing “It’s a thief in the night, to come and grab you, it can creep up inside you, and consume you” without eliciting laughs? Despite the lyrical melodrama, by the time the synth-stomp of the chorus rolls around it’s impossible to even care what she’s saying. It rocks but you can dance to it and that’s all you need to know. It’s like the darkness in the light or, more precisely, the irresistibility of our self-destructive urges. Watch Rihanna making out with a white-colored mannequin in the Thriller-lite music video for further metaphoric evidence of this.

“Disturbia” dropped during Rihanna’s “Good Girl Gone Bad” period, and the song seems blatantly about the side of love that gets you battered after you throw your boyfriend’s car keys out the window before the Grammys. “Disturbia” was actually written by Chris Brown and his crew, but it sounded stupid without a girl singing it. Maybe that’s what makes it one of the greatest pop songs of the decade.