Composition
Fill in the blank: "Shine a light through an open ___"
We Found Love
"We Found Love" is an electro house and dance-pop song. It also displays elements of Europop, pop, techno, trance, and Eurodisco. According to the digital music sheet published at musicnotes.com, the song is written in the key of E♭ minor and it is set at a tempo of 128 beats per minute. The instrumentation of "We Found Love" consists of alarm bells, a keyboard, repetitive pumped-up synthesizers and 4/4 beats. Rihanna's vocal range in the song spans one octave, from the lower note of C♯4 to the higher note of C♯5. Priya Elan of "NME" commented that Rihanna sounds "extremely relaxed" and Bill Lamb of About.com wrote that her vocals are simple and unaffected. Leah Collins of "The Vancouver Sun" wrote that Rihanna's vocals on "We Found Love" were similar to her own ones on "Fly". According to Elan, the keyboard work in the song bears resemblance to that in from "Only Girl (In the World)" and the melody is similar to that of "Complicated", a track included in Rihanna's 2010 studio album "Loud". Similarly, Michael Cragg of "The Guardian" noted that "We Found Love" is in the same vein as "Only Girl (In the World)", with regard to its dance beat. The lyrical content of the song is spare and largely revolves around Rihanna chanting the song's hook line, "We found love in a hopeless place". Jody Rosen of "Rolling Stone" described it as "half-baked romantic". Rihanna starts the song in a falsetto airy voice as she sings, "Yellow diamonds in the light / And we’re standing side by side / As your shadow crosses mine / What it takes to come alive." Michael Cragg commented that the first chorus is almost being sidelined in favor of a large chunk of Harris's riff, before they join on the second chorus. The hook repeatedly rings throughout the song. In the second verse, she sings: "Shine a light through an open door / Love and life are real divine / Turn away cause I need you more / Feel the heartbeat in my mind / It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny / But I’ve gotta let it go".