Ariana Grande could never have become the era-defining pop artist we know today if she was afraid or uptight about her emotions. This is the artist who seriously sang “This situation has to end” on “Eternal Sunshine” – while she was dealing with the dissolution of her marriage. The same one who casually dropped the verse “Look at you, boy, I invented you” on “Thank U, Next” – recorded after breaking off an engagement with someone whose name graces a song on “Sweetener.” The same one that published Positions.
Without “Dangerous Woman,” none of these albums would have been possible. Ten years after its release, the singer’s third studio album is a cornerstone of her development into the most important voice in pop – both figuratively and literally: “Greedy” may be the loudest song she has ever recorded. Above all, “Dangerous Woman” was crucial for the stories Grande was able to tell with this unwavering voice and the emotions she was allowed to convey through it. The album put the future of pop in their hands.
“Young Ariana run pop,” Nicki Minaj rapped on “Side to Side,” the album’s most successful single. It would still be two years before Grande’s first number one hit – “Thank U, Next” reached the top in 2018 – and yet Minaj’s statement hit the mark. Pop was in transition in 2016: Rihanna and Beyoncé cemented their legacies with “Anti” and “Lemonade,” respectively. The charts were largely dominated by Drake and Justin Bieber. The Chainsmokers and Meghan Trainor also celebrated great success. But no one operated in the same territory as Grande. Having an exceptional voice is one thing. Controlling her the way she does on “Dangerous Woman” is quite another.
“Into You” as a blueprint
“Into You” is one of the most compelling examples of an instant classic in the history of modern pop. “That first line, that ‘I’m so into you / I can barely breathe’ – that’s maybe the closest thing I’ve ever heard to pop music perfection,” Lorde said a few days after “Into You” was released as the second single from “Dangerous Woman.” Grande sings this line in a low tone, not quite a whisper but just as fragile and breathless. As she approaches the explosive first chorus, her voice moves closer and closer until she fills the entire song with one bold demand: “Baby, come light me up.” The rapturous bridge elevates the whole thing from extraordinary to masterful.
“Touch It” is similarly dizzying from start to finish. Whenever it sounds like the song has reached its climax, she ups the ante with relentless flights of fancy and breathtaking vocal runs. The dull drums on “Thinking Bout You,” the album’s closing track, mimic an excited heartbeat. Just behind the beat, airy harmonies float around Grande as she reaches for an imaginary hug and the song flows into an explosive bridge. “I’ve been waiting patiently, patiently / ‘Cause I don’t have you here with, here with, here with me,” she sings. Then the euphoric discharge follows: “But at least I have the memory.” This sounds like a natural precursor to “Imagine” from Thank U, Next or “Better Off” from Sweetener – songs that you have to close your eyes to really hear and, as a result, feel.
She created the majority of the album together with Max Martin, Ilya Salmanzadeh and Savan Kotecha as well as Tommy Brown. With credits on 10 of the 15 songs, she was more involved in the writing process than ever before in her career. Today, Grande works as a writer and co-producer alongside Martin and Salmanzadeh, who have become her closest confidants. Her now signature vocal production style – layering layer upon layer of airy harmonies in delicate arrangements – first began to emerge on “Dangerous Woman.” Likewise her narrative voice. Grande intuitively understands how pop has functioned over the past decade – not just as an art form, but as a kind of archive of an artist’s life.
Feminism and self-assertion
As an album title, “Dangerous Woman” is as direct as the pop records that preceded it – Rihanna’s “Good Girl Gone Bad” or Christina Aguilera’s “Stripped.” What’s important is that the discourse surrounding almost every woman in pop a decade ago was inextricably linked to an expected performance of feminism. Something as obvious as expressing one’s sexuality was presented as a radical act instead of allowing women to simply, well, exist. And yet, “Dangerous Woman” hardly ever feels like it’s trying too hard to cast Grande in a new light — even in the moments that have aged less well. The confession “We got that hood love / We got that good love / We got that hot love” on “Bad Decisions” is broken with a knowing wink: “Ain’t you ever seen a princess be a bad bitch?”
At the age of 22, she was already building excitement around her pop persona. In the second half of “Knew Better / Forever Boy” – a two-part piece that deals with a breakup, moving on and falling in love again in the space of five minutes – Grande sings: “Never been with a boy more than six months / I couldn’t do it, got too used to it.” This is not a confession, but a mere fact. This attitude later gives rise to “The Boy Is Mine” and “Twilight Zone” on “Eternal Sunshine”, where she sings: “Why do I still protect you? / Pretend these songs aren’t about you / Hope this might be the last one / ‘Cause I’m not fooling anyone.” There is a special intimacy in the way she sings about relationships: direct in her delivery, but not naive to the curiosity of her audience. The first line we hear on “Let Me Love You,” a seductive collaboration with Lil Wayne, is: “I just broke up with my ex.”
Pop didn’t seem to fully embrace Grande until “Sweetener” and “Thank U, Next” – when she was catapulted into the genre’s highest spheres and it became impossible to separate the story of her life from her music. The bombing at her Manchester concert on the Dangerous Woman tour in 2017 and the death of her former partner and collaborator Mac Miller in 2018 cast a heavy shadow of sadness over her career. With each new release, audiences met her with an exaggerated fragility that ignored the toughness she displayed on “Dangerous Woman.” Her fearlessness on the album wasn’t a reaction to trauma or tragedy – continually getting up and moving forward is the way she’s always grounded herself.
Underrated foundation
The bluesy “I Don’t Care” is one of the most underrated cuts on “Dangerous Woman.” It’s a clear precursor to “Shut Up” on “Positions” and “True Story” on “Eternal Sunshine” – not just sonically but also thematically. “Now I laugh about the things that used to be important to me / Used to have a hold on me,” she sings. “Like what do you think, and what he thinks, and what they think / But I love me.” In the years following “Dangerous Woman,” Grande would need that inner strength more and more. The ability to block out the noise prevented it from drowning out her voice. This focus allowed her to sharpen her skills as a songwriter and producer as the artistic metamorphosis that began on “Dangerous Woman” came to fruition.
“Dangerous Woman” transformed Grande from hitmaker to tastemaker. She temporarily seemed comfortable in the first role. The album was originally almost going to be called “Moonlight,” after the doo-wop-inspired ballad that opens it. “Focus,” the horn-heavy standalone single from 2015, was initially planned as the lead single. But both songs reiterated territory that Grande had already staked out. “Focus”, ultimately left off the album entirely, would have been better off on the 2014 album “My Everything” alongside “One Last Time”, “Problem” and “Break Free”. “Moonlight,” on the other hand, referred back to her debut “Yours Truly” from 2013. “Dangerous Woman” had to be different. Their change of direction brought the underlying R&B influence of their early releases to the surface without giving up their place in pop.
Anyone who was surprised by their complete commitment to this intersection on “Positions” wasn’t paying attention when it mattered most. “She’s now at the peak of her abilities as a tastemaker, as a songwriter. She’s learned from all of her successes: what her voice is, what works for her,” Kotecha told Rolling Stone in 2019 after the release of “Thank U, Next” about Grande. “If the producer or engineer doesn’t understand what she wants in the vocal arrangement, she’ll just say, ‘Can I have a quick go?’ Then she goes into Pro Tools and fixes it. She masters this craft like a master. I’ve been around some of the greatest singers of all time in my life. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
“Petal” and the old ethos
Grande will release her eighth album, “Petal,” in July. “It definitely comes from a place that I may have been too afraid to go into or too polite to go into,” she said of the work. “Now this just feels like: fuck it.” It’s the same ethos that shaped “Dangerous Woman” – when Grande first realized that shyness and politeness would never serve her as well as the relentless existence of an absolute pop powerhouse.
