“I’ll wait for you,” he sings, “Even though it feels like I’ll always be number two to someone you can’t hold anymore.” On “six thirty,” Grande’s silky harmonies glide in over and over to ask, “Are you down? What’s up?”, but the lyrics framing it reveal the weight of the question. “Do I just sit this one out and wait for the next life?” The song blooms over wisps of strings and heavy, heady drums, like an artifact from his Trilogy mixtapes. “Will I ever love the same way again?” she cries on “off the table,” a syrupy ballad with The Weeknd. The stunning Ty Dolla $ign-assisted “safety net” interrogates and negotiates with fear: “Don’t know if I should fight or fly,” she sings, the physiological language set over constant, murky sighs. You hear her wrestling for control, asking instead of answering. “Though I wish he were here instead/Don’t want that living in your head,” she sang then, before diving into the mantra-like refrain: “We’ll get through this, we’ll get past this.” On the new record, the hopeful conclusion is less immediate. Musically and spiritually, much of the album builds off of “ghostin,” a delicate, pulsing track from thank u, next about navigating a lost love with a new partner. Grief sneaks up on you, and on Positions, it’s woven into Grande’s attempt to process love. The song quiets for a moment, and the gravity of what she’s said sinks in. But then she sings about writing “love letters to heaven,” and the instruments dissolve. The song is both winking and not, a sequel to sweetener’s “successful” that shimmers from behind volleys of drums. On “just like magic,” she ticks off her calendar: meetings, meditations, “read a fucking book,” ardent manifesting. “No shit.”) A slew of slinky sex jams-the title track, “my hair,” “nasty”-drape her harmonies over hazy synths. (“That means I’m trying to 69 with you,” she hums. “Just give me them babies!” she yelps on “34+35,” a track constructed around an almost-subtle joke until the final seconds. She’s both in love and scared of it, and the frenzy of new romance animates the contrast. The giddiness that propels the album also heightens its tension. “All them demons help me see shit differently,” she sings 20 seconds into the album, “so don’t be sad for me.” That statement clears the way for some of the record’s goofier moments it also functions as a kind of thesis. #Ariana grande yours truly rar how toIt traces the quiet work of piecing yourself together, the terror of re-learning how to trust. Positions, her third album in two years, searches for peace. thank u, next caromed through phases of glee and grief, moving from pink Champagne bravado into stark confessions. Sweetener dazzled because its joy was defiant. #Ariana grande yours truly rar full“That’s why her hair’s so big,” she joked, referencing a line from Mean Girls, “it’s full of trauma.” The grace with which Grande has navigated horrors-the ability to name their impact and steer towards healing, to make a top-charting song about a panic attack-has become fundamental to her music. The image was from a scan, and it showed regions of her mind lit up from the effects of PTSD, the disorder revealed in clear, screenshot-able form. During the spring of 2019, in the interval between two titanic releases, Ariana Grande posted her brain on Instagram.
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