You Know It Won’t Fix Anything

Stay is the song you put on when you need permission to feel something you already know you feel. Rihanna stripped back to almost nothing—just her voice, a piano, and the admission that wanting someone to stay, even when you know they shouldn’t, even when you know you shouldn’t want it, is its own kind of honesty. Mikky Ekko wrote it as something quieter and then she got hold of it and made it uncomfortably raw. The video helped: she’s in a bathtub, steam rising, tiles empty around her, and there’s a specific kind of loneliness in that image that the song had already earned.