It’s easy to think of Rihanna as simply an idiot’s punchbag instead of a singer with a new album out soon.

But she is a singer. And she does have an album out soon. So let’s talk about that instead. In an interview with Glamour magazine, Rihanna said of her forthcoming album that her goal was to make a record that both Lil Wayne and Kings Of Leon would love.

On second thoughts, let’s just talk about her brush with domestic violence instead. We think you’ll find it slightly less depressing than talking about Kings Of Leon in any meaningful way.

There’s not long left before the big tell-all Rihanna interview, and we can’t wait. Honestly, if it wasn’t for young women recounting harrowing tales of brutal violence against them in uncomfortable detail for the benefit of millions of passively gawping rubberneckers, we just don’t know what we’d do.

Luckily for us, though, Rihanna’s physical and emotional turmoil isn’t just being confined to one television interview – it appears to be the main promotional tool for her forthcoming album Rated R. That would make sense, given that most of the songs on the album appear to be about how she’d like to blast a dirty great hole in her chest with a handgun, but it doesn’t make for especially perky interviews.

Take her interview in the latest issue of Glamour, for instance. Rihanna has been named as one of the magazine’s women of the year, which gives her a chance to not only discuss the effect that being beaten up by Chris Brown – and the ensuing media scrutiny – had on her, but also her new album. For example, Rhianna says that her album is “super fearless,” which represents her frame of mind at the moment, and that her mother and father prepared her for her recent distress by splitting up when she was a girl. Oh, if only other parents could be as thoughtful as Rihanna’s parents.

But in the interview, Rihanna does make an important point. No matter how famous she is, or how many horrible things happen to her, we should all remember that she’s just a normal person:

“Before, there was an innocence to me. It was a perfect image. So the minute I did something imperfect, it was a big deal… People forget that after we get to our hotel rooms at night, we take a shower, we watch TV, eat room service and do normal things. Behind it all, we are still human beings.”

She’s right. We do exactly the same thing as her. Admittedly we don’t tend to stay in hotels too often, and we’ll often have some stale bread instead of ordering room service, and we usually play with a wooden bat and ball toy because we’re not great big fancy-schmancy celebrities who can afford TVs, and instead of showering we’ll just dribble down ourselves and rub it in with our fingers. But other than that it’s the same.

But still, Rihanna has every right to come forward and talk about her beating whenever she likes. Unless it makes Chris Brown decide to do more interviews about it as well. In that case she should probably stop.

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