USA TODAY International Edition
Grande’s ‘Sweetener’ adds spice
Singer’s ‘comeback’ traces the stages of love
“Sweetener” is an album of resets for Ariana Grande. It’s impossible to understand the singer’s fourth album without mentioning the career rupture that influenced it: the 2017 bombings at her Manchester concert, a tragedy Grande has credited with reshaping her “Sweetener” songs. And then, for an artist whose music has always been characterized for its romance, came her most dramatic love story yet: her whirlwind engagement to comedian Pete Davidson. The couple announced their plans to marry in June, after just weeks of dating.
On “Sweetener,” Grande reconciles these two life-altering events with 13 tracks that explore the stages of falling in love, and the stages of loving yourself. Every successive Grande album has been hailed as her “most grown-up yet” – a compliment that be condescension, as though her tiny stature and Disney princess-esque soprano makes her music girlish by default.
Yet the growth Grande sings about on “Sweetener” is more existential than the confident sexuality of her previous “adult” album, 2016’s “Dangerous Woman.” Here, she’s in Oprah mode, preaching self-love while revealing her struggles along the way, threading the life-affirming themes of the “Sweetener” lead single “No Tears Left to Cry” throughout the album.
How Grande soundtracks this journey is what makes “Sweetener” the most interesting – and, at times, confounding – release of her career. Max Martin, the Swedish production juggernaut behind the majority of Grande’s biggest hits, takes five tracks on the album, and Pharrell Williams, an equally prolific pop producer whose style is colorfully quirky to Martin’s bloodless perfection, worked on seven.
Responsible for “Sweetener” singles “No Tears” and “God is a Woman,” Martin is also behind the album’s most obvious contender for its next single, “Breathing.”
If Martin’s tracks have a downside, it’s that (because of the sheer number of pop stars for whom he has made hits) his songs can bleed together – “Everytime” is reminiscent of his work on Taylor Swift’s “Reputation,” and the ’80s flourishes in “Breathing” invoke his work with Carly Rae Jepsen, two influences that aren’t necessarily a bad thing for Grande’s music.
But, oy, those Pharrell tracks. How listeners feel about the sureto-be-divisive songs he wrote and/ or produced on “Sweetener” will largely depend on how they feel about “The Light is Coming,” Grande’s Pharrell-backed June single with Nicki Minaj.
For better or worse, Pharrell’s seven “Sweetener” tracks don’t get any weirder than “The Light Is Coming.”
That isn’t to say all of his and Grande’s tracks are duds. The Pharrell-produced closing track “Get Well Soon” is a soulful soundalike to “Honeymoon Avenue,” the first song on Grande’s 2013 debut “Yours Truly,” sweetly bringing the pop star full circle with a track that celebrates enduring love.
With its self-assured songwriting and a handful of promising potential singles, Grande’s “Sweetener” succeeds as a comeback narrative, giving the artist her happy ending after the toughest year of her career. And in its own way, the album’s hit-or-miss track list is a further sign of growth for Grande, demonstrating that she’s willing to take risks with her music. That the album’s odder tracks don’t quite land, though, is a sign that Grande is still refining her instincts as an artist. A voice as timeless as hers deserves songwriting and production to match.