Ariana Grande - "Thank U, Next" (the album)

chart records are so annoying + say more about how the charts themselves work than they do about the works/artists setting the records. (not to downplay ariana's achievement, which is estimable.) i honestly think billboard needs to stop reporting that stuff as aggressively as they do but then i guess their charts would not get as much exposure in the social media world via rt's of Music News Shady Facts Crave and so forth.

I'm still not sold on "NASA" but I love "Bloodline" more than the rest of you; it has my favorite use of "shit" in a pop song in years.

I personally think that those involved in pop music should be aiming higher and aspiring to better.

fake smile, needy, NASA, imagine are some of the best songs she’s recorded

Yes!! (I now forgive your Sweetener shade in the poll results thread 😄)

(...tho “R.E.M.” and “Get Well Soon” are as great as those four!)

"bloodline" at the very least might be my favorite of her fake dancehall songs

My thing w/“Bloodline” is it’s a bit formulaic, you can see the joints in the songwriting; in the bridge especially. It’s the kind of Max/Ilya song that could be recorded by any pop star (though probably not as well!)

I don’t really mind it, though... having a handful of fantastic songs, and then a grab bag of others (a few of which feel a little “off-the-rack,” a few a little “WTF”), contributes to the album’s appealingly “rough & ready” vibe. Especially coming on the heels of Sweetener... it’s like a quick change-up, a “what if we did this?” experiment... or, idk, a theoretically perfect EP fleshed out w/bonus tracks (because why not)?

Like I love the ‘tude behind recording an amazing sequence of deeply personal, unique tracks... and then tossing on a mindless, fun banger that shamelessly bites *NSYNC.

she really has the juice rn and i'm glad she made an album commensurate w/ the zeitgeist that is her celebrity

"needy" jesus

despite the narrative sweetener didn't feel as influenced by her personal life as it could have to me... it reminds me a bit of 'rated r' maybe in that they sorta split the difference between a weighty post-trauma album and a regular ol album. this one feels really of its moment w/o being obnoxious or ham handed about it.

all that aside the concepts/songwriting are just much better to me... "give you the whole world / i'ma need space" is a dope line. "fake smile" is a really deft & sympathetic take on the pop star complaining about fame song. "ghostin" is brutal and so specific w/o really saying anything specific at all.

texturally "ghostin" is not something i thought the max martin camp was capable of producing

Yeah "NASA" was one of the tracks I liked instantly and is still one of my favourites. The chorus is great.
And I don't why but "Fake Smile" reminds me of Lauryn Hill.

texturally "ghostin" is not something i thought the max martin camp was capable of producing

Totally; it’s pretty remarkable.

“In My Head” is the album’s sleeper, IMO... how do you even describe that feel? Woozy, psychedelic(?) I love the pair of lazy little drum fills coming out of the bridge; it’s such a great, unexpected musical choice.

There’s not a lot to recommend in this long roundtable discussion of music journos — the final section, where they’re rating/ranking pop starts like they’re baseball players or Pokemon, is downright bizarre (even depressing) — but this quote from one Jason Lipshutz does sum up nicely how I feel about the last 2 albums:

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8499235/ariana-grande-thank-u-next-five-questions

To me it's a matter of personal preference, and maybe even mood: the devastation at the center of Thank U, Next lands with a dazzling force, while Sweetener's 15 tracks arrive like a flurry of presents to unwrap, some imperfect but almost all sumptuous. Thank U, Next may very well be viewed as Ariana's crowning achievement when all is said and done, but the lighter moments of the six-months-older Sweetener are still difficult for me to overlook.

hey, I'm glad somebody's endorsing "Bloodline" as a single!

Talk about "converting haters left and right"(!):

thank u for some laughs and some v productive conversation ! it was nice bumping into u ! #FutureFeministPiers #FingersCrossed

— Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) February 20, 2019

I have just noticed that all the singles and almost all the tracks are around 3min long (the longest tracks on the album being "Ghostin" at 4.30).
That's very short in today's standards. It's (almost) early Beatles'era singles length ("7 rings" is 2.58) !

Oh and another (silly) thought : I have no idea why but I was thinking there might be as much or more use of the word "fuck" than on... Use your Illusions I AND II combined !
Is there a "parental advisory lyrics" on her cds (does these things still exist actually !?)

in an interview in the Guardian today Mark Ronson says there's pressure to keep songs under 3:15 otherwise you're at risk of boosting your "heard - incomplete" stats in Spotify which is apparently the kiss of death

Aw thanks I hadn't noticed that evolution !

So back to the spirit of the early 60s singles in terms of length...
I like that !

The parental advisory label is indeed made a prominent part of the new album’s cover art design (the “explicit” version, anyway) — to the point that when fans were doing their own mock-ups of the cover, that label and its placement were a big part of the concept.

(parody mock-ups, using other photos)

I love these stats; the only artist in history to replace herself at number 1, twice in a row

https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/ariana-grande-replaces-herself-at-number-1-for-a-second-time-on-the-official-singles-chart__25630/

Also, after obliterating the first-week streaming record, the album still generated more U.S. audio streams in its second week of release than any other album has in its first week. (And yes, I know streaming stats can be gamed by some fans leaving Spotify running 24/7 or whatever.)

this destroys sweetener on every level

This one lives up to what I expected from Sweetener after reading the breathless hype for that last fall.

A new collab w/ 2 Chainz (“Rule the World”) drops tonight.

flopson otm

yep

*queues up "bad idea"*

I like this album a lot and have listened to it regularly lately but I think it lacks something to be a really GREAT album.
Maybe one more big song instead of one of the 2-3 that I find meh (so that's roughly one quarter of fillers on the album...)

if you swap out some of the worse tracks for best ones on sweet that’s pretty close to a classic. just skipped thru sweetener again and it’s crazy how bad the pharrel tracks are lol

I'd keep REM, No Tears Left, Breathin and Succesful from Sweetener, i'd definitely ditch Make Up and 7 Rings from Thank You, Next but not much else. There's surely a good poll of all the tracks to be made, maybe in another coupla months or so tho.

With « breathin » and « better off » instead of « bad idea », « make up » or « in my head », it would be a classic album for me !

idk what people dislike about "make up", it's short but sweet and i love the syncopation

"make up" is not bad but I just never feel like listening to it so it's one of the tracks I always skip.

UK garage remix of 'Bad Idea' as soon as possible please.

Rod Liddle in not a fan shock

Ariana Grande's album is vapid, talentless, derivative, oversexed crap, says Rod Liddle. Pre-teen pop was never much cop. But compare this to the Monkees — or even Vanilla Ice. It's far worse.https://t.co/3eDsPzoAro

— The Spectator (@spectator) March 3, 2019

who?

Former editor of R4's Today programme and loveable racist, misogynist & assaulter of pregnant girlfriend half his age.

Best pop album since

Rachel Stevens - Come And Get It

Ahah Vanilla Ice

"her fanbase is sub-teen" -- maybe when she was still on victorious

Cool/interesting Tommy Brown interview: https://www.complex.com/music/2019/03/ariana-grande-producer-tommy-brown-thank-u-next-making-of

ooh

nice intw, thanks !
I like that, by all acounts, champagne was pretty central in the process !

that is matrix bullet time levels of dodging the "7 Rings" question

haha, I noticed that too 😉

this album is dope