Fluxblog 508: Ariana Grande x 5
A few songs by one of the most interesting and talented singers in contemporary music
I’ve been listening to a lot of Ariana Grande this week and thought it’d be nice to put together a few of my favorite posts I’ve written about her music through the years. Grande has the odd distinction of being a pop star whose album tracks are consistently drastically better than her hit singles, so if you’re only casually familiar with her you probably have no idea she’s one of the most interesting singers in contemporary music. In addition to the songs featured here, I recommend looking into her songs “NASA,” “REM,” “Get Well Soon,” “Moonlight,” and “Honeymoon Avenue.”
August 23rd, 2018 12:17pm
How’s Life?
Ariana Grande “Sweetener”
Pop albums take time to make, while pop star relationships tend to burn bright and fast. As a result, it’s easy to approach Ariana Grande’s new album Sweetener as a collection of songs about her intense romance with the comedian Pete Davidson. (There is, of course, a song on the record called “Pete Davidson.”) But many of these songs have been in the works for some time, and “Sweetener” in particular apparently dates back to 2016 when Grande was still involved with Mac Miller. (A lyrical tip-off is the entire verse about enjoying getting head from this lover, and Miller is a guy who proudly rapped “I just eat pussy, other people need food” in his album-length tribute to Grande, The Divine Feminine.)
Fun fact, right? Cool trivia. But I think this context is valuable in understanding where Grande is coming from as a person and as an artist. This is a woman who had her heart set on singing songs that conveyed a joyful, lustful love, regardless of what relationship she was in. She’s chasing a feeling, and trying to capture it in sound, and she absolutely nails it when she works with Pharrell Williams. Williams, one of the great geniuses of modern pop R&B, has an instinctive understanding of what chords and melodies flatter Grande’s voice and persona that most of her other collaborators have lacked. His chord structures float and sparkle around her voice, which is at once bold and sweetly delicate, like Mariah Carey in her youth. The songs sound light and dreamy, like she’s just levitating in a haze of infatuation.
This is the state of mind she wants to be in, like, all the time. Blissful, horny, and removed from stress and the horrors of the world. And whomst among us does not want this? Look at this gif of Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson from earlier this week. Who doesn’t want to feel like Ariana in this moment? Who doesn’t want to have someone look at them the way she looks at Davidson? This is an ideal state!
The idea driving all of this – her life, her songs – is that this is a choice. You have to want it, to chase it, to bring it into your life and cherish it. This is a woman who recently endured a horrific trauma, and made a decision to throw herself into love. She made a record about love rather than the hate and murder and cruelty she witnessed firsthand. She’s singing about her experience, but offering the best advice she can give to anyone else struggling: Find love, embrace love, hold on to it. You need that sweetener.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 20th, 2019 10:33pm
Overthinking With My Heart
Ariana Grande “Needy”
“I don’t give no fucks” is a thing people say when all they do is give a fuck. There’s an irony to Ariana Grande singing that phrase in “Needy,” a song that is entirely about giving a fuck and being insecure and desperate for affirmation and approval. It’s a double negative – she’s saying she doesn’t give a fuck if people know this about her, but trying to “own it” is just another layer of neuroses. It’s trying to control the narrative. It’s trying to find some solid ground to stand on when everything else feels unstable.
But still, the vulnerability on display in “Needy” is admirable. The desire to “own it” is brave, because you’re not supposed to be proud of being so invested in a fledgling relationship, and so open about what you actually need from it. You’re supposed to play it cool, and hide all this intensity – overanalyzing texts, obsessing over every little thing, volatile emotions. You don’t want to freak them out, so you start feeling like you’ve got to protect them from your feelings. But your feelings aren’t an attack, and you’re just protecting yourself. Grande’s vocal performance conveys the strength of her feelings, but also a weariness. Tamping down this passion is driving her crazy and transparency is her only way out of this situation.
The line that really gets me here is in the chorus: “I can be needy, tell me how good it feels to be needed.” This is the crux of the whole thing, right? This isn’t about demanding someone’s time and energy and feelings. It’s about affirming your reciprocal value, and hoping that the person you need appreciates that need, because it’s ultimately a high compliment. There’s a lot of emotional intelligence in this song, and it’s not just in its vulnerability. It’s in admitting that things are confusing and complex and weird, and that need is both necessary and embarrassing. But it’s worth it: “I know it feels so good to be needed.”
Buy it from Amazon.
February 11th, 2019 1:54am
Make It Stick
Ariana Grande “Make Up”
Ariana Grande shines brightest on songs in which her voice seems to hover just above the beat, and chords seems to float around her presence. “Make Up” has the same head-in-the-clouds infatuated tone as the best songs on last year’s Sweetener, but with a little more edge to it. The lyrics about make up sex are cute, but they are just scaffolding for Grande’s impressively nimble and expressive vocal melody. She’s drawing a lot from the vocal syncopation commonly found in rocksteady and dancehall here, but without putting on some horrible faux patois. There’s one melodic bit in the verses that sounds extremely Studio One to me, but I can’t quite figure out whether or not it’s reminding me of a specific song. I just know that I wish I could hear a Studie One legend like Marcia Griffiths, Willie Williams, or Sugar Minott take a crack at singing it. Either way, this approach suits Grande’s voice rather well – she’s very graceful around a beat, and makes parts which require a great deal of focus and breath control sound breezy and casual.
Buy it from Amazon.
February 26th, 2021 12:55am
Even When The Learning’s Done
Ariana Grande “Main Thing”
“Main Thing” is Ariana Grande doing an extremely Ariana Grande song. It’s Grande in what has become her most natural mode, or maybe more like Grande on autopilot if you don’t want to be generous. The track is vibey but unobtrusive, basically a tonal palette and rhythmic click that gives her some form to work with and plenty of space for her to sing in a way that’s somehow both showy and understated at the same time. Almost all of my favorite Grande songs have her veer into a very specific melodic pattern – a fluttery scale fluorish that typically lands at the end of verses or choruses. If you don’t get what I mean, in this song it’s the way the melody gently speeds up for a sort of curlicue at the end of the first verse: “Been a minute since I tasted something so sweet.” I can’t get enough of that trick, as far as I’m concerned it never fails no matter how many times she does some iteration of it. It flatters her voice, it’s melodically lovely, and it’s perfect in expressing the sort of lusty-infatuation-with-a-tiny-dash-of-nervousness feeling that she does better than most anyone else.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 13th, 2024 10:09pm
All Of The Champagne In California
Ariana Grande “Ordinary Things”
I can’t tell whether the new Ariana Grande record Eternal Sunshine is her pushing a fading Max Martin out of his comfort zone as a musician, or if it’s more like Martin trying to get her type of floaty R&B music into his comfort zone and mostly not getting there. For the most part the songs don’t give me what I like about her music, and they don’t really provide any of his core competencies as the master of Too Big To Fail chart pop either. So it’s no big surprise that the only song on the record I love without reservation is “Ordinary Things,” one of two tracks without a Martin writing credit. This is the kind of Ariana song I like the most – an airy feel, a busy yet nimble melody, low-key sensuality, and the general sensation of getting a contact high off of someone else’s intense infatuation. This is never the sort of song she releases as a single but it’s the thing she’s best at doing, and it’s something that’s simply outside of Martin’s skill set. They aim for this lightness on some other songs on the record but his pop guy mindset resists grace in favor of sledgehammer hooks that distrust an audience’s patience and sensitivity. It just ends up sounding clumsy to me. I’m just glad he didn’t stomp all over this song’s sweet and delicate charms.
Buy it from Amazon.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• This post by Nick Sylvester, essentially about meta fascinations getting in the way of simply loving things, hit me like a truck.
• Molly O’Brien has been writing about other people’s favorite songs of 2024 over at I Enjoy Music. This post includes mine, “Mary Boone” by Vampire Weekend. I really love her take on it.
• Elise Soutar wrote about her favorite music of 2024, with a lot of interesting thoughts along the way.