This is a disappointed love song. A woman has gone around with a man, but the man hurt the woman’s feeling and that was a great shock to her. The woman told the man that she was going to break up with him, but he didn’t want to her to and wanted her to forgive him. So the man tries to apologize to the woman, though she doesn’t want to see him and she is still shocked and gets angry. I can image such a couple through this song. I think Rihanna compares the end of relationship of a couple as the end of a show in this song. I think the first phrase of the song, “how about a round of applause, standing ovation” means that the couple’s love will be over. Applause and standing ovation express the end of a show. I also think the word “dumb” has two meanings. One meaning is that the man is stupid, and the other meaning is that the man doesn’t say anything to the woman. The woman thinks the man tells only superficial words, so he seems to her that he does not say anything true, and that means he can’t say anything. When it comes to the phrase of “when I know you’re only sorry you got caught”, this means that the man isn’t really sorry for what he did and thinks he is poor man. I think the woman guesses that the man only thinks he was unlucky when he did something bad and was found in the act of doing the bad thing by her, so Rihanna wants to say that the man is very self-centered by this phrase. Next, the phrase of “you put on quite a show” means the man is liar. I suppose the woman thinks she has been deceived by the man’s ostensible words, so Rihanna suggests that his lies are a kind of show. And the phrase of “really had me going” means that the woman has believed his insincere words and she thinks herself stupid, so Rihanna uses this ironically. Rihanna uses the phrase of “go on and take a bow” because she wants to express the end of a show as she does in the phrase of “how about a round of applause, standing ovation”. We can imagine that the woman is going to burn the man’s clothes because she wants to destroy her memories of the man with the phrase of “grab your clothes and get gone, you better hurry up, before the sprinklers come on.” I think the word of “re-run” in the phrase of “this just looks like a re-run” means that the man says the same things over and over again.
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