The man who co-wrote Rihanna’s first number one single SOS has revealed that the song’s lyrics are actually the names of eighties hit songs.

SOS was released on February 14, 2006, as the lead single from Rihanna’s second studio album, A Girl Like Me.

SOS topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three consecutive weeks and became Rihanna’s first single.

Nearly 20 years since its release, SOS co-songwriter Evan ‘Kidd’ Bogart shared a surprising bit of trivia about the hit song in a new interview with podcaster Daniel Wall.

During a performance at Behind the Wall Podcasting, Bogart said the second verse of SOS consists almost entirely of eighties song titles “put together like sentences”, including hits by Michael Jackson and the English rock band Cutting Crew.

SOS co-songwriter Evan ‘Kidd’ Bogart shared some surprising trivia about the hit song in a new interview

Grammy winner Bogart, who co-wrote SOS with Jonathan Reuven ‘J.R’. Totem, told Wall: “The whole second verse of that song is ’80s hit titles put together as sentences because I thought it would be super clever.”

Bogart, who won a Grammy for Beyonce’s 2008 hit Halo, then shared the names of the songs and their lyrics that make up the verse in the order they appear.

“Take On Me (by) A-ha,” he began, before reciting the lines that made it into SOS. ‘You know inside, you feel it right. Take me on.’

It is followed by the lines ‘I could just die up in your arms tonight’ from Cutting Crews (I Just) Died In Your Arms, before Rihanna sings the title track to the Modern English hit I Melt With You and Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears.

The last two eighties songs to end the verse are You Keep Me Hangin’ On by English pop star Kim Wilde and Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel.

A clip of Bogart revealing the true meaning of Rihanna’s SOS lyrics went viral on TikTok, as fans couldn’t believe they had never noticed this “creative” detail.

One comment read: ‘It’s actually really creative. Pretty cool.’

Another person added: “He’s been waiting 20 years for the opportunity to tell us the inside joke.”

During an appearance on the Behind The Wall Podcast, Bogart said that the second verse of SOS consists almost entirely of ’80s song titles “put together as sentences”

SOS was released on February 14, 2006, as the lead single from Rihanna’s second studio album “A Girl Like Me”

Bogart won a Grammy Award for his work on Beyonce’s 2008 hit Halo

A third user admitted they “always thought” the verse was “so random”, while a fourth person joked: “He high-key manifested the success of the song by using the number 1 song titles in the song.”

The Way You Make Me Feel from Jackson’s seventh studio album Bad peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on January 23, 1988.

Wilde’s You Keep Me Hanging On topped the chart for a week in June 1987, but the Tears for Fears hit Head Over Heels did not actually secure the top position, peaking at number three.

British new-wave/post-punk band Modern English I Melt With You charted at number seven on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Chart in 1983, but did not actually crack the Hot 100 top 10.

Cutting Crew’s biggest hit to date (I Just ) Died peaked at number one in the US, Canada, Norway and Finland, and Norwegian synth-pop band A-ha’s re-recorded version of Take On Me soared to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 19, 1985 .

One TikTok user reacted to the revelation that SOS is full of references to eighties songs: “this song is as old as all the songs it referenced when SOS was new.”

Another person added SOS was “the definition of an ’80s-inspired masterpiece” before Wall replied: “Definitely a masterpiece.”

Several people also highlighted the One Direction song Better Than Words as another popular example of a song “just being song titles”.