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February 8, 2019 - Republic Records
Ariana Grande’s album thank u, next which occupied the top three billboard spots, revels in adolescence, but finds Ariana dabbling in profundity and introspection. An outstanding mindless listen and a powerful mindful one, thank u, next is built to stimulate listeners with highly engineered loudness and the cultural phenomenon of the small, small woman behind the project, singing with agility and operatic force about her growing generosity towards herself.
Ariana’s peculiar form of celebrity plays a coy role in interpreting the album and its success. Its strengths considered, it’s difficult to believe that anyone else could put out an album identical to thank u, next with such positive reception. Compared to the boisterous and outspoken celebrities who hold or have held billboard spots—Beyoncé, Nikki, Drake, Kanye—Grande's space in the public sphere seems to be mostly us watching her out of adoration. Her celebrity lack feuds, political turmoil, and high-profile melodramatics, the nearest exceptions being a report that she wished her fans would die and some illuminati conspiracies. Yet, few viral images come to mind as innocent as Ariana looking lovingly at Pete, her at-the-time boyfriend, while enjoying a lollipop—hyper sexuality completely absent, in my viewing at least.
Anyway, the first song. ‘Imagine,’ opens sparsely with lightly echoed trap hat and snare drum hits—her R&B beginnings quick to follow—Ariana vocals soul-up the place. Enjoying some “bubbles and bubbly,” the first track lays out the beginning stage of a relationship that later seems fabricated or perhaps just embellished to her liking. The latter will later be fortified in ‘7 Rings,’ which toes a highly Cardi B line. It’s strange to hear what could just as easily be teeny-bopper lyrics so dutifully belted with virtuosity. It’s powerful, especially if you’re not reading the lyrics—which is true for almost all of the songs. Don’t come looking for poetry, come looking for a voice that can sell lyrics stagnant in any other throat.
Not yet privy to my own advice, I scanned the lyrics of ‘needy,’ which reads like an adolescent ballad, but through listening, begins to reveal a person coming to herself for the first time meaningfully—the language is nascent as the experience is. A relationship is forming. The language is tricky. It’s tempting to over-spiritualize or bring self-help jargon into the understanding of the album. And in a sense, that’s all real and really there. “Tell me how good it feels to be needed,” she says. An empowering formula: To whom she is needy, purpose is given. Her understanding of herself is reflected in the relationship to a romantic partner—it's an opportunity to articulate her abilities to herself as much as to her audience. And here is where the self-help portion emerges (even if sheepishly for me) where a person can find sympathy in these songs, a person can also find power. The entirety of the song, her vocals over an airy chorus and a monotonous pinging chord, monologues her awareness of her behaviors—or the speaker’s behaviors, whatever—“Passionate, but I don’t give no fucks/ I admit I’m a lil’ messed up/ But I can hide it when I’m all dressed up.”
Unabashed about the contradictions within a person (as if having multiple needs were a contradiction) ‘NASA’ reverses the gravity on Ariana’s romantic life. “I’d rather be alone tonight” she says, flexing the sinews that weave back into ‘needy’: “Sorry if I'm up and down a lot.” It’s a song that specializes in growth, and springboards from “emotional rollercoaster” to self-care with a lover invited to participate, which is a difficult transition for anyone, and is glibly put in the opening lyric, “This is one small step for woman/ One giant leap for woman kind.” The song is especially resonant coming from her Catholic background in which romance—a track to marriage—is highly traditionalized and regimented, at least in its more prolific history (not to say that there isn’t nuance, but this is about thank u, next and not the evolutions and mutations of Catholicism).
The song is packed with playfulness, adding a cheerleading chorus to “I’m the universe and you’ll be N-A-S-A.” And here too, she makes point that her demureness is not the same thing as helplessness—her need generates power for both partners, or put less politically symbiosis. The song is much an over-explanation to a partner that seems to have difficulty grasping the nuance, “Bottom line/ Usually, I would love it if you stayed the night/ I just think I'm on another page tonight/ It ain’t nothing wrong with saying ‘I need me time.’” The analogy is a little corny, but endearing and useful, “Give you the whole world/ I’ma need space.” Still what’s interesting, is that to win her partner’s comfort a sort of fable is needed in the form of a brief metaphor. Suddenly, she has re-crafted the diminutive position.
But now we’ve come to a classic sex jam with ‘bloodline.’ It’s a return to more traditional dance-floor pop with trap infusion. It comes with a brass and woodwind section which preambles her candor regarding one-night stands. We’re seeing Ariana come up among fellow self-described savages, like Nikki and Rhianna, as she finds her list of fucks becoming a list of suitors. Sierra would be proud without a doubt; no longer does she have to wish she was a boy. Now it’s the boys getting mixed up, confusing an isolated carnal need for love. That’s what happens when social mobility is extended to women though. She says, “Get it like you love me, but you don’t/ Boy it’s just for show...you gon’ have to let this shit go.”
While, “I don’t want you in my bloodline” is a comedic refrain, we’re also getting some juicy Caribbean interludes—I'm not saying there’s a lot of meaning to it, but it begs a little investigation. Her mother was a CEO of Hose-Mccan Communications which is known for having developed a virtually indestructible sound powered communications system for marine use. Hose-Mccan's work with the US Military has led to some fragmented conspiracies without many impactful conclusions, hence the aforementioned illuminati musings that orbit powerful entertainers of color. Anyway. The point is, the girl is choosey about whose genetics combine with hers. Technically a lover will never be in her bloodline, but the sentiment isn’t lost on a syntactic misstep, nor is the humor.
As I learn in the next song, a girl can only party the pain away for so long. It’s fitting that ‘fake smile’ should open with a gospel chorus bemoaning, “After laughter, comes tears” following the playfulness of ‘NASA’ and the slapstick of ‘bloodline.’ In her most restrained vocal performance, ‘fake smile’ witnesses the externalization of the singer’s inner life. A truth brought out, rather than suppressed to keep comfortable other people’s reality. “Fuck a fake smile,” if she’s hurting, she’s going to let you know. It’s a simple message, but for someone who’s been lambasted on Instagram for not taking good enough care of Mac Miller and being accused of being responsible for someone’s death—living out a truth that’s not necessarily comforting for other people takes some psychological momentum. As seen through her Twitter and Instagram activity, a lot of weight has fallen on her in the public eye to mother and care-give the people in her life regardless of the load it puts on her. It’s a simple song, but it’s a stark rejection of that expectation.
Coming up against inner resistance to her thrust onward with life, ‘bad idea’ is the anthem to a marbled path towards whatever. With a powerful refrain, “I got a bad idea,” Ariana steps into her (or the speaker’s) escapist habits. There’s something a little campy going on in the background—another cheer squad call and response. “I’m gonna call you over to numb the pain,” she sings, and then an up-pitched oddly chipper “uh-huh” backs up the line. The song’s bedrock is catatonia. A natural progression from ‘bloodline,’ which glorifies her role as a temporary sexual partner, ‘bad idea’ laments the inertia of the habit, but also recognizes its role in her process of 🌸 becoming🌸 . The song’s repetitive nature accentuates the cycle it depicts. Using someone, using the line over and over again, the parallels are smartly constructed and executed to personalizing affect. It’s a guilty song that encourages reckoning.
A brief intermission:
This is as good a time as any to have a brief intermission about how Ariana gives more credit to her team/friends who helped create this album than I’ve seen out of any artist since I’ve been writing reviews. In interviews she is consistently ready to bow to the collaborative process that has resulted in her albums. She interrupts frequently to dote on the people who works with her, derailing conversations about the recording process. It’s a really beautiful thing to see. Onward.
Ariana’s mother’s least favorite song, ‘make up’ (even though she acknowledges that it bangs), picks up the second half of the album. It details some of her daughter’s lesser habits. Ariana falls close in line, finding time to jam out to her own track, but wincing at her pettier moments. The beat is astounding on its own and comes from an up and coming member of her production team out of Austin, whose name regrettably I can’t find or remember. Playful syncopation, well placed broken beats, and the simplest of chords mirror Ariana’s reckoning with portions of herself which she considers less savory.
The self-deprecation embedded in ‘make up’ and its whimsical vocal melodies provide a buffer against the more somber and difficult ‘ghostin.’ It’s a song whose intimacy gives me pause to speculate on. Those familiar with Ariana’s relationship with Mac Miller and his subsequent death and her disengagement from Mr. Pete will fill in the blanks. An eerily simple track with a powerful refrain, “I know it breaks your heart, when I cry again, over him, instead of ghostin him.” The turn of phrase packs some heat. Whining pads and staccato strings build a large spacious and markedly empty atmosphere. At its core, ‘ghostin’ seeks to appreciate the people who are with you through your heartaches. I found little to ponder in my time with it, but plenty to sit with.
The next track ‘in my head’ does little to lighten the mood, but if there’s one thing Ariana fans know about Ariana, it’s that she’s a Cancer, with a slight Gemini leaning. Just kidding, I don’t know if they know that or not. But in Western modern and modified Ptolemaic Astrology, that’s what she is. All that is to say, it should be no surprise that once darkness has been discovered, its many estuaries will be thoroughly dragged.
Immediately the song brings doubt to the praise in ‘ghostin’: “you’ve been so good.” The apologetic doting ostensibly said to a significant other is undercut in the intro to ‘in my head,’ with an authoritative voice recording, “Here’s the thing, you’re in love with a version of a person that you’ve created in your head that you are trying to but cannot fix.” The trap aspects that have been milling about in the album take a big cut of the attention with heavy high-hat work drawing the listener into the song. And there’s Ariana’s virtuosic delivery of “it’s all in my head.” With her climb into high soprano it really doesn’t matter what the line’s about. Her power with it is undeniable. Another thing she says is ‘skrrt skrrt’ which is popular among the youth and cool guys of differing calibers. The relationship breakdown is this: He’s got Gucci tennis shoes (on her account) and she thinks she can work out the kinks in her relationship, which is to say she thinks she can overcome her cognitive dissonance and bridge the gap between an idealized person and an actual person, reconcile any differences between the perfect replica and the imperfect living one, and keep herself relatively stable within that process.
Now that she’s done that, she wants to sing a song about spoiling herself, and she named that song ‘7 Rings.’ This is a hard Cardi B emulation, which wins my favor easily. After she says, “I want it. I got it” six times in a row, the power of her money and her shameless flaunting becomes endearing and threatening and sexy. She buys her hair. If a person types “Ariana Grande Conspiracy Theories” into Google, the great majority are about her ponytail.
She sees it. She likes it. She wants it. She got it. The song opens and is broken up by the “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things” motif. It’s a little overdone, but it’s hard not to enjoy. Plus, Ariana, during these Americana fugues, makes it clear that it’s lucrative to be her friend, “buy matching diamonds for six of my bitches. I’d rather spoil all my friends with my riches.” It’s an important bounce-back track after tallying up the woes during the previous three.
Now we’ve hit the single. The gratitude song that makes all other break up songs into shallow petulant blah-blahs, ‘thank u, next.’ Arising out of a tradition amongst the songstress and her friends, ‘thank u, next’ makes public an inside joke, a refrain about unsavory opinions, bad days, bad foods, whatever. She subverts the phrase to more positive usage here, listing her more prominent exes and what she’s learned from being with folk. At the end of the day it’s a conclusion to the whole premise of the album, which is reaching self-love.
The album reaches its natural end with ‘thank u, next,’ which even in its capitalizations and abbreviations underpin the generational adaptations in tow. What would’ve once indicated flippancy and mockery towards teeny-boppers is now culturally reflective of movements away from outside regiments. Though linguists, during the advent of text and online spelling creeping its way into the larger public consciousness, have long-cried the death of language and culture thereby, what we’re actually seeing is an insurgence of language and culture which throws off more puritanical traditions and finds economy and efficacy in its intuitive adaptations of increasingly defunct lingual and social structures. Not to aggrandize thank u, next beyond its intention and impact. What it does is represent and empower through that representation of Ariana finding emotional nuance through highly produced pop, trap, and funky R&B. We are left with the epilogue ‘break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored.’ As a piece of music, ‘break up with your girlfriend...’ is well produced and lays a couple of vocal hooks down to keep you listening. But like most of the album it relies on Ariana’s endearing qualities and her power as a singer. That is to say, there is little exciting about the arrangements and progressions. Yet what it lacks in musicality it makes up for through a powerful intersection of vulnerability and highly produced top 40’s banger. “It’s a mood, it’s a vibe, it’s a look, it’s a match.” thank u, next highlights an emotional junction with a singer who is open and inviting and, in her way, representative of an ethos, a new generation of emotional understanding and articulation—one that doesn’t necessarily rely on eloquence, but one that supports it nonetheless. ⛰️