Songfacts®:

• This 6-minute epic was co-written by Justin Timberlake and helmed by his production group, The Y's. Rihanna and JT teamed up two years earlier for her song "Rehab."
• In this song, a series of crime scene metaphors are used to reflect back on a relationship. It appears to have been inspired by Rihanna's tumultuous one with Chris Brown, who assaulted her earlier in 2009 when they were traveling to the Grammy Awards. Rihanna didn't say much about the assault, so fans looked to her songs for clues. Note, though, that Rihanna didn't write this song; along with Timberlake, it was written by the songwriters Rob Knox and James Fauntleroy, both of whom previously worked with... Chris Brown.
• Rihanna told The Sun December 4, 2009 that having such personal lyrics meant that the recording process wasn't always easy. She said: "There are lots of emotions and things that go through your mind, things that you don't want people to know about. On songs like 'Stupid In Love,' 'Fire Bomb,' 'The Last Song' and 'Cold Case Love,' they get really personal. I'm able to listen back to it now but in the beginning it was really weird. I couldn't even listen to demos or anything. It was too deep for me. I kept having to leave the studio when people wanted to listen to the songs."