Chris Brown Tells "20/20" Rihanna Cried After Hearing "Changed Man"

In an interview airing tonight on ABC's 20/20, Chris Brown reveals that his apologetic track "Changed Man" made Rihanna cry after he played it for her just one month after their February 8th altercation in Los Angeles. Rihanna had previously denied ever hearing the song, but Brown admits to ABC News' Robin Roberts, "I played the song for her... the day I did it... a month after the situation. She called when she first heard the song. And I mean, I'm not trying to say — call her any liar or anything like that. But I played the song for her when I first wrote it. And she cried."

Brown, whose new album Graffiti is out December 8th, has since been ordered to cease all communication with Rihanna and adhere to a restraining order after being sentenced on assault charges. Graffiti's "Famous Girl" is another song clearly inspired by Brown's relationship with the Rated R singer. In the track, Brown alleges that Rihanna had cheated on him prior to the February 8th incident, with Brown also singing, "I might have cheated in the beginning, I was wrong for writing Disturbia" and "Sorry I bust the windows out your car," a reference to another supposed encounter between Brown and Rihanna.

"I was wrong for what I did," Brown reiterates in his interview with Roberts. "And I would definitely say that it's not something that I look past or look over. Something that's really, really touchy. And, and like I said, I'm — I'm really sorry for — for what went down. And what happened." Brown also admitted that his initial public apology to Rihanna that appeared on YouTube was "heavily coached," however, "It was genuinely from me, but it wasn't projected genuinely."

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• Rihanna Breaks Silence About Chris Brown Incident in Emotional "20/20" Interview
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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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