A PERFECT PARFAIT
Ariana Grande comes back from the deadly Manchester bombing with a celebration of life and new love, writes Pearl Boshomane Tsotetsi
In comic books, superheroes are often born from traumatic situations. Daredevil was blinded in a chemical accident, which then gave him “radar sense”. Superman was born with his powers, fine, but his home planet exploded and his parents died when he was a baby. Dr Strange was a brilliant surgeon whose hands were irreparably broken in a car crash. Batman’s foray into vigilantism came from witnessing his parents’ murder as a child (haters back off — his super power is that he is rich).
Last May, Ariana Grande — one of the biggest pop stars in the world and a woman with 125-million Instagram followers — experienced a very public trauma of her own. And she’s come back from it as the best version of herself yet (musically, that is).
The tragic Manchester bombing, which killed 23 people, happened at her concert, and while the singer was unharmed and didn’t lose any loved ones, she was very public about her grief and the guilt she felt.
Soon after, she pretty much went into hiding, before splitting up with her rapper beau Mac Miller.
It’s only natural, then, that we expected Grande’s hotly anticipated fourth album to be emotionally intense. But sweetener (yes, it’s lowercase — as are most song titles) is anything but dark.
It has moments of sadness, anxiety and introspection, but it’s mostly a slow-burning dance of defiance against trauma and fear (the lead single was no tears left to cry) and it’s a 48-minute love song to love (and to her fiancé Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson, who even gets an interlude named after him).
Sweetener is not the cry of a victim — it’s the low-key battle cry of a survivor.
(No clichéd, stomping pop anthems about endurance — this is not a Katy Perry record, thanks.)
The album opens with a 38-second peacock moment, where Grande shows off that powerful, goosebump-giving voice on the a cappella raindrops (an angel cried). But it’s a false first impression: the rest of the album is upbeat, confident, sassy, sexy and a little cocky.
Instead of dwelling on things that have gone wrong in her life, Grande has surpassed survival mode and is in thriving mode. It’s as though the bombing pushed her to seek the light and aggressively embrace it.
Take the deliciously catchy successful, where she sings: It feels so good to be so young/ and have this fun/ and be successful/ I’m so successful.
One of the album highlights is the offbeat the light is coming (which features Grande’s frequent collaborator, Nicki Minaj, whose verse contributes absolutely nothing of value). That song also has the spirit of defiance: the light is coming to give back everything the darkness stole, Grande repeats during the chorus.
On the slightly Caribbean-influenced breathin (another highlight), Grande details her struggles with anxiety and post-traumatic stress, and toys with the idea of medicating. Some days, things just take way too much of my energy/ I look up and the whole room’s spinning, she sings, before reminding herself to just keep breathing and breathing and breathing.
But the album, as mentioned, is a gorgeous praise song to new love, and love that renews, replenishes and gives more than it takes, lusty love that also borders on obsession. On the effortlessly stunning R.E.M. (based on a 2016 Beyoncé demo), she sings: ‘I love you’/ Who starts a conversation like that?/ Nobody, but I do/ But you are not a picture/ I can’t cut you up and hide you.
Another highlight is a reupholstered version of Imogen Heap’s Goodnight and Go. Why’d you have to be so cute?/ It’s impossible to ignore you/ Why must you make me laugh so much? It’s bad enough we get along so well, she sings.
This is the perfect lead-in to the second-last track on the album, the strings-heavy pete davidson, just over a minute long. Much has been written and tweeted about the couple’s whirlwind relationship, and Grande doesn’t care. She’s deeply and madly in love — and it’s beautiful. She sings about her bae: Universe must have my back/ fell from the sky into my lap/ And I know you know that you’re my soulmate and all that/ ... my whole life got me ready for you.
The slow-burning final song, get well soon, is the album’s best moment. The harmonies are magnificent, the languid trap-influenced beat fantastic.
The singer and songwriter has said the song is about her struggle to overcome anxiety following the Manchester bombings: My system is overloaded/ I’m too much in my head, did you notice?/ My body’s here on Earth, but I’m floating/ Disconnected, so sometimes, I feel frozen and alone.
She then tries to pep talk herself (and her fans) into a better space: You can work your way to the top/ Just know that there’s up and downs and there’s drops/ Unfollow fear and just say, ‘You are blocked’/ Just know there is so much room at the top.
Sweetener opens on a slightly morose note, but by its end Grande makes it clear she’s doing just fine — although not without wobbles.
This isn’t an in-depth confessional, “look into the darkest corners of my soul” album — that’s what makes it so refreshing, and makes it Grande’s best work yet. She’s come into her own — it feels like she’s finally in control of her vision. If sweetener were a meal, it wouldn’t be a main course. It’s a musical parfait, and it’s perfect. LS
IT’S MOSTLY A SLOW-BURNING DANCE OF DEFIANCE AGAINST TRAUMA AND FEAR