ariana grande - yours truly

i mean

gr8 album but the last three songs kind of derail the train grand vitesse

what's her connection w/ babyface?

it seems like he's been pretty quiet for a while save for a handful of placements here and there, then this album comes out and all of a sudden he's got a handful of the best pop songs of the year

i think the album ends fine... the mika track really cuts against the rest of the album but as a one-off i think it's fine

it sounds like a one direction song

i was gonna start a thread for this today. so great, right? delete the last three tracks on sight obv. this year's carly rae j

"piano" though

i think they probably just hired Babyface after it became clear that '90s R&B was the the vibe they were going for.

Babyface has had a cool low key post-stardom career -- Fall Out Boy, Tha Carter III, a great Anthony Hamilton single last year. the single from the duet album he's doing w/ Toni Braxton is pretty good.

mika song reminds me a lot of pink's latest single "true love"

idk i just really wanted the classic mariah / ashanti vibez to continue the whole way through, why must CRJ and taylor and now ariana insist on putting two duets with terrible milklivered blokes on their records UGH! please can this trend stop.

"lovin' it" and "piano" A+, "baby i" is also soooooo good obviously

yeah that track on carter III is one of the most underrated wayne songs imo

"you'll never know" is probably my favorite on this

minor thing i've noticed: trap snares

i think they probably just hired Babyface after it became clear that '90s R&B was the the vibe they were going for.

i guess i'm saying if dude's got songs this good in him people should ring him up more often

Harmony Samuels is the 2013 MVP, partly because he can throw trendy trap snares into a context you wouldn't ordinarily hear them in w/o it being a trainwreck.

yeah harmony samuels + babyface basically doing a co-LP together seems like one of those fantasy scenarios that somehow came together

So great! I only got a quick tour of this record the other night but this record! Wow!

The Babyface tracks eclipsed all else on first listen

"honeymoon avenue" opens with disney strings then brings in a doo-wop chorus then 90ish pitter patter production then the-dream "ayyyys" ... such a weird but dope track

cute album i guess, admirable

idk i associate 90s r&b with a certain grain however whereas this project continues to me to be a kinda plasticky precision-tooled uncanny valley simulation of such. flawlessly blank glide thru various melismas like she's on a tron bike

nice though

have you shagged ariane yet?

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

yeah agreed that the songwriting is very rooted in 90s r&b but the production has a total post-radio disney sheen

on the one hand you kind of lose the soul (soundwise, not metaphysically) of the style they're referencing but flipping the hyper-pop switch does give this a bit of an identity

like, the album sort of drags when it starts to sound like jazmine sullivan

"you give me chills / every time we chill" is a great line

yeah i'm def kinda coming round to that vibe as more of a feature than a bug, as her instruction manual would doubtless advise

still always kinda funny tho that r&b would have the friki-frikiest hyper futuristic production and vocal manipulation and then dudes singing actually like autotune robots and whatever other manner of distancing strategies, yet none are as truly bracingly posthuman as disneyfication

if ariana's reading she has my permish to put 'bracingly posthuman' on the cd sticker btw

ariana grande : 90s mariah :: carly rae jepsen : 80s madonna

crj is full of character, i reject that proposition

she is?

she's also 26 so she's had years to grow into her voice, which is still what keeps me from cosigning this ariana album 100%

love it mane

gonna have to give this a listen

tentative enthusiasm for this; rtc otm about how applying a bubblegum sheen to this style can make the final effect kind of blank if efficient

last three tracks are a total dead zone

i'm looking p rockist itt tbh, can forsee a volte-face soon come

eh it just feels like it employs a lot of aesthetics i love and sometimes all at once ("piano") but it feels like there's something missing

I agree with Brad. On paper I should love this and was fully expecting to, but it's lacking something I can't quite put my finger on that keeps me firmly in the "it's good I guess" category. Everything after track 9 is kind of inessential too.

might pin it down to the performance. sounds like mariah with a cold

for someone who nobody really rightfully expected to be a pop star worth watching before she did a song with mac miller six months ago i think it's fair to just enjoy the album for what it is and not worry about falling short of some specific ideal.

Agreed that the Mika track is a chore but would you guys like "Almost Is Never Enough" if the guy from The Wanted wasn't on it? I mean, it sounds more '90s R&B (in the vein you guys are referencing) than a lot of other songs on the album.

i feel that but its shortcomings (whatever these may truly be bc i sure as hell can't totally identify them) cause me to zone out

Agreed that the Mika track is a chore but would you guys like "Almost Is Never Enough" if the guy from The Wanted wasn't on it?

i don't particularly care about the wanted dude. song is very labored-sounding

I enjoyed this quite a lot when skimming on iTunes stream but I'm not sure that there's anything quite as astonishing as The Wanted's "I Found You" anyway.

ha i thought me and jordan were the only people here that liked that song

i had no expectations of the ariana grande (hadn't even heard "baby i" much beforehand) so it surpassed whatever they were

i thought one direction were meant to have completely killed the wanted's career? such a terrible, pointless boy band

for someone who nobody really rightfully expected to be a pop star worth watching before she did a song with mac miller six months ago i think it's fair to just enjoy the album for what it is and not worry about falling short of some specific ideal.

― to smang a topanga (some dude), Monday, September 2, 2013 5:13 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Are you saying this because of her teen tv star origins? I had no knowledge of her (Disney? Nick?) origins, so my expectations were formed by me thinking her first three singles were good to great. And even with that knowledge, I'd have still maybe been slightly underwhelmed. It's not like her beginnings condemn her to releasing weak material. Demi Lovato's Disney origins didn't stop Here We Go Again from being a good album.

ha i thought me and jordan were the only people here that liked that song

― to smang a topanga (some dude), Monday, 2 September 2013 21:40 (24 minutes ago) Permalink

dude it's my favourite song of all time.

i'm not really dissing the Disney pedigree, Demi's first 2 albums are both classics to me. more saying that she was an unknown quantity before "The Way," but it's not like the 4 Non Blondes swag she was working with before that was especially promising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc1jscuFnas

I didn't know the name or the voice of The Wanted dude when I first heard the album and just thought the song was a nice slice of the 90s. Mika is the only inexcusable inclusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OGyHRKMPOE

(I liked "I Found You"! And then they went and became shit again, see above)

that song is really bad

this is great, best ilx pop rec in a while thx yall

i trust flopson, ill check this out

ha i thought me and jordan were the only people here that liked that song

― to smang a topanga (some dude), Monday, 2 September 2013 21:40 (24 minutes ago) Permalink

dude it's my favourite song of all time.

― Tim F, Monday, September 2, 2013 6:05 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i found you is sort of hard to not like

imo

also gr8 to see all you victorious fans joining me here!

right? ;_;

sam & cat >>>>

All I know by The Wanted is "I'm Glad You Came" and that song is the fucking worst.

it is, but "I Found You" is actually dope

"glad you came" is as good imo

sam & cat >>>>

― to smang a topanga (some dude), Monday, September 2, 2013 10:52 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haven't caught it yet but v excited

j0rdan you know you just sent rev for the hills right

what's particularly objectionable about "glad you came"

the double entendre?

eh, it's not a dealbreaker, as long as you don't play it around me.

THAT DUDE'S VOICE

yeah. that one voice is awful.

also, it's just an annoyingly nagging tune

glad you came is dope imo

but def in a cheesy way

Don't mind Glad You Came. Walks Like Rihanna is up there for worst song of the year, tho,

has "baby i" only just become a single? was surprised not to find an official video on youtube

it was only released in late July and debuted on charts via downloads, hasn't seemed to get any kind of radio push yet

ok i'm sitting down w/ the album for the first time and when i got to the "Real Love" jack something in me just kinda went THAT'S TOO FAR

good of you to tell ppl how they should enjoy the album when u hadnt heard it

i just thought it was weird how people's expectations for her went from 0 to 60 overnight, with a debut album i think you gotta allow for the possibility that it will actually sound like a debut album

yeah, even the singles weren't all that impressive

The key-changes and Broadway moments littering this are what's keeping me from getting completely on board, I'm not so much against the appearance of middling rappers as I am the ballads. Really strong debut though.

Loving this obviously, but it doesn't feel like 90s R&B to me so much as early-00s pop music (Samantha Mumba, Stacie Orrico, Dream, 3LW, etc.) Clearly her voice and her vocal arrangements harken back to 90s Mariah Carey, and the BIG OBVIOUS 90s samples make it easy to say "90s R&B pastiche" - but the songwriting and especially the production has the sheen of early 00s pop all over it. And all of the 'trap' hi-hats on this album remind of the post-Timbo/Darkchild skittery drums that were on like EVERY pop song from 2000-2003.

yeah i'm definitely not saying that it achieves any kind of uncanny fidelity to the mid-90s era it grabs a few samples from -- i remember the first time i watched "The Way" video and kinda feeling like if you swap out the guest rapper it could've been made at pretty much any point in the last 10 years.

actually the remix with Fabolous effectively makes the timewarp effect complete.

also makes the song a lot better

smh kids these days dont even know what a decent guest rap is

page me (lol) when mac miller comes up w/ something as clever as rhyming "catch up with a model" and "ketchup in a bottle"

Ok, so I'm listening to this and kind of glad it doesn't actually actually sound like 90s r&b cause then it would come off too studied and eyerollworthy. Not as into "Piano" as everyone else, and haven't hit the dreaded end stretch but so far this is jams, yeah.

Song with Wanted dude is fine, didn't even make it to the end of the Mika song's first chorus, last song works in a kind of CRJ-ish way but feels out of place.

i thought the mac miller verse was pitch perfect! can't nobody do it like fab mind you

It feels like an r&b album that could have come from the last ten years but it codes as "pop" in a way that harks back to r&b's chart dominance, as opposed to today's dance/EDM pop landscape.

"Loving this obviously, but it doesn't feel like 90s R&B to me so much as early-00s pop music (Samantha Mumba, Stacie Orrico, Dream, 3LW, etc.)"

see this suggests I should love this but I don't

coming around to this bc i finally listened to it while outside

RichJuz thoughts and yes I know a number of you are all 'ARGH' at him right now but anyway.

haha the title instantly made me love him all over again

not sure i even really need to read the rest of the piece tbh

The other cuisine comparisons are great (especially the Weeknd one).

yeah, booming review (and reviews within). i'm also happier to disagree about molecular gastronomy than any other framing

why are we ARGH at him again?

idk i booed his alunageorge rvw in mock-horror i guess

She has a tendency to sing extremely fast. Among the many hooks of the second single “Baby I,” co-written and -produced by vet Babyface, is, “But every time I try to say it / Words, they only complicate it,” sung in a rapid, two-second blur (this becomes surreal when repeated three times during the song’s climax).

this frankly distressing apparent malfunction was really when the idea of her as droid took hold for me - take notes janelle

OH i'd blocked the alunageorge horror out

one of my favourite lines on the grande album is "baby i been feeling you / before i even knew what feelings were" which i assumed was where the bot thing took hold for rtc

oh yes so she does. that would have been more sensible

tbh i didnt even fully appreciate she actually starts the tune with "baby i got love for thee so deep inside of me", almost makes the mariah comparison valid on its own

I agree with him that this album's poppiness is its best asset. Feels kind of a relief to hear someone making an r&b album this unabashedly bubblegum while mostly eschewing what passes for top 40 pop these days tbh. If anything, that's the real throwback here, not a few 90s samples or Mariahisms.

it's kinda like a better/less British (if that's not the same thing) version of the Little Mix album

would that be the album with an inexplicable atlien tribute featuring t-boz

no wait i think that was Born Sinnner

nah rly tho i guess i can hear that yeah

almost thru my first play of this. there were parts where it lost my attention but overall it is quite good!

- "honeymoon avenue" is kind of awesome, what a great opener
- the one w/ the guy from the wanted is not as bad as i thought it would be but it is kinda boring and it the melody veers into jazmine sullivan "in love with another man" territory v often
- oh my god this mika song, why was it included. smh at what wicked has brought to the world.
- wtf why is the last track bad too :|

better left off the album more like

smh at what wicked has brought to the world.

We got a fun Dro track from it tho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9AO56-moow

"baby i" sounds even better right after "honeymoon avenue" than it did as a single release

ah ok so i will be spending some time w/ this album

this album sounded awesome to me ofl

<3 <3 <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJuWlMFToNo

so great

<3

listened to "lovin' it" like fifty thousand times today

scripted a whole music video in my head, that's how u know it's real love

(lol)

also what is the issue with "almost" besides the guy from the wanted? he has a horrible voice but gosh, i really like it.

You don't tell us about how you've scripted an entire music video for a song in your head and then not give us at least a rough outline. Jesus.

lol. 90% of the time i start thinking abt music videos it's just "what kind of/how many outfits can i work in and what would the backdrops look like" so yeah, that

scripted a whole music video in my head, that's how u know it's real love

― ^^ post obviously honoring and supporting Qualcomm (zachlyon), Tuesday, October 8, 2013 2:39 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i always do this too

ok i kind of adore better left unsaid too, y'all are broken

it doesn't fit at all -- like an alternate universe what-could-have-been recording (rihanna but can sing?), but after the wicked singalong it wasn't really a part of the same album anyway

love her voice on it, my brain sticks it in pure house diva/disco mode, already scripted the VMA performance in my head

"Better Left Unsaid" is great, one of my favorites

i know winter's coming so every time i see the sun i play this album

<3

i love lex using the phrase "winter's coming" w/o having any knowledge of game of thrones

inadvertent tv reference :(

Big Sean as THE PRIEST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhcpubAVdmc

this song has been burning up the rhythmic radio playlists here

shame i never heard "baby i" on the radio tho since that's my favorite :(

haha perfect xp

is that arnie's son? p cute

sup with the fans all the time tho

every single time she sings that part "cuz you listen / and you care" my mind starts to sing "snap your fingers and do your step / you can do it all by yourself"

haha same here

is that arnie's son? p cute

yupppp

best taste in music video boys since t-swift

haha yes

gosh, thanks you guys

sup with the fans all the time tho

― r|t|c, Wednesday, October 30, 2013 11:05 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think "what a girl wants" era xtina is an underestimated component of her mariah-heavy dna

ctrl+f "tattooed" :(

her range/voice control is nuts on this one

http://www.complex.com/music/2013/10/ariana-grande-interview-shadow-of-a-doubt-2013-cover-story

Do you believe in aliens and ghosts?
Of course. We’d be so stupid to believe we are the only people here.

Have you ever seen an alien?
Not an alien, but I’ve had a ghost/demon experience. We were in Kansas City a few weeks ago and went to this haunted castle and were so excited. The next night we wanted to go to Stull Cemetery, which is known as one of the seven gates to hell on Earth. The Pope won’t fly over it—

I love that you know that. Sorry, go on.
I felt this sick, overwhelming feeling of negativity over the whole car and we smelled sulfur, which is the sign of a demon, and there was a fly in the car randomly, which is another sign of a demon. I was like, “This is scary, let’s leave.” I rolled down the window before we left and said, “We apologize. We didn’t mean to disrupt your peace.” Then I took a picture and there are three super distinct faces in the picture—they’re faces of textbook demons.

Let’s see the picture.
I deleted it. The next day I tried to send the picture to my manager and it said, “This file can’t be sent, it’s 666 megabytes.” I’m not kidding. I used to have a folder called “Demons” that had pictures with all the screencaps in it, but then weird things started happening to me so I deleted it.

What weird things?
I was going to sleep about two weeks ago. I had just gotten off the phone and as soon as I closed my eyes I heard this really loud rumble right by my head. When I opened my eyes it stopped immediately, but when I closed my eyes it started again with whispers. Every time I closed my eyes I started seeing these really disturbing images with, like, red shapes. Then I opened my eyes and got back on the phone and was like, “I’m really scared and I don’t want to go to bed tonight.” And then I scooched over to the left side of my bed, because that’s where the best service is in my room, and there was this massive black matter. I don’t know what it was.

What?!?
It was like a cloud of something black right next to me. I started crying. I was on the phone like, “What do I do, what do I do?” and they said, “Tell it to eff off.” I thought, I’m not going to do that. It’s going to upset it, so I’m just going to chill and not feed into it because all it wants is fear. It feeds on fear. I watched it move to the front of my bed and then I fell asleep on the phone. I woke up and it was gone. The next night my friend Tyler was staying with me. She said she was trying to sleep and her body felt paralyzed almost, and she described the same exact thing I saw.

Alrighty then. “The Way,” is a pretty romantic song, but how bad was Mac Miller’s breath in the video?
It wasn’t bad if you like cigarettes and whiskey. It’s certainly a distinct taste.

boggling at how the journalist just went "so! your video, then!" at that point. THERE ARE MORE QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT HER DEMONIC VISIONS, IDIOT

Weird demonic vision --> Mac Miller's bad breath = coherent segue IMO.

OMG THIS ALBUM IS JACOB'S LADDER I'VE BEEN RIGHT ALL ALONG RIP BOO

lmaooo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_fZwxfwwk

love it

IMO this makes her way more interesting

This Twitter announcement she's going to release a Xmas single every week between now and the day itself is not doing anything to make me think she is the new Mariah.

Was that her intention?

xpost I meant to say "isn't the new Mariah" instead of "is", of course

ha was gonna say

dig that clip

1:35 is like whoa

am i supposed to be able to hear the backing track there

no i think it was just a cappella

man alive her performance of Tattoed Heart at the AMAs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPWr2U6VXxQ

I need a GIF of her going up the stairs of the stage to accept her Best New Artist or whatever award stat because that was adorrrrable.

yeah that performance was amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0NoUlZgzfE

she's been releasing christmas songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYSWgsUQt1U

hold up

wait

shut up and kiss me babe

Had no idea who she was, but she's pretty funny on Sam & Cat (which my son likes, and which has its moments). Actually motivated me to check out her music (no opinion yet).

it looks as if from twitter that her new stuff is going to include a duet with chris brown :((((((((((

everyone is doing it

The artist that she is most often compared to is Mariah Carey, and when her name comes up, Grande looks unsurprised, with an expression on her face that says, Gee, I’ve never heard that before. “I mean, it’s a huge compliment,” she says with a smile. “But when you hear my entire album, you’ll see that Mariah’s sound is much different than mine.” Despite their similar looks and range, Mariah wasn’t her biggest influence growing up, she says. Imogen Heap, India.Arie, and a slew of other divas, like Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, and Donna Summer, inspired her. And Beyoncé, of course. “That’s where I discovered my range. I grew up listening to Destiny’s Child. I would try so hard to mimic all Beyoncé’s little runs and ad-lib things. They are so precise. It’s like math. Remember the Destiny’s Child version of ‘Carol of the Bells?’ I took it apart, put it in GarageBand, and dissected it all. That’s how I learned about harmonies and runs and ad-libs. Thank you, Destiny’s Child!”

http://www.vmagazine.com/site/content/2304/grande-dame

ilu Ariana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiAdATuBEJM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L7YIadPQnI

hahahaha

This album in the springtime! !!

'honeymoon avenue' on repeat today ~~d-__-b~~ :')

That song made me realize there are other ways that people pronounce the word "avenue" that I was not aware of.

Her new single features Iggy Azalea. I'm not a fan of the latter, but I have a strangely good feeling about this.

Iggy Azalea is the worst, but then again, she's had Mac Miller and Mika on some of her other singles. Plus it can't be as bad as the Chris Brown feature we have to look forward to.

I was afraid the thread bump meant her Chris Brown duet was out, so Iggy Azalea doesn't seem so bad by that measure.

lol xp

arianna grande and iggy azalea bringing that real R&B and hardcore hip hop back

http://www.missinfo.tv/index.php/ariana-grande-problem-feat-iggy-azalea/

I love the verses but I'm not sure I want to be reminded of "Wait" while listening to an Ariana Grande song.

Oh my god, Big Sean is the whisperer.

this > "talk dirty" though i'm not totally sure it's going to be enough to definitively win the "it's been about 20 years since the gap commercial with the swing dancing, right?" sweepstakes

lol wtf is this shit

this is pretty bonkers but i'm digging it

i like it

no way it's better than "talk dirty" tho

i like "talk dirty" a lot but ariana's vocals on the verses sound so good on this that i'd be willing to put it over that

it would be nice if iggy azalea was swapped out for 2 chainz tho

"talk dirty" is the illmatic of our time

this is a banger

what's with arianna grande only having white collaborators though

that statement makes sense if you accept this as truth https://twitter.com/cbattan/status/376866688714932224

what's with arianna grande only having white collaborators though

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Monday, April 28, 2014 10:48 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

big sean was on one of her singles, and babyface wrote most of her songs, but yeah, the mostly all-white features is pretty weird. she's a disney star (at least one who hasn't gone full miley yet); it's probably an "image" thing (ugh)

no sterlingo

Omg that tweet about big sean

Song's a banger, ariana remains teenpop mvp. I had been thinking of her as latina all this time for some reason? She's only had three collaborators on her own material ever and one is black

mac miller is def kind of a weird look for her but pop music is littered w/ weirdo collaborations by stars before they blew up

iggy makes total sense tho

Really could do with the unintentionally sinister whispering in this song tho

It astounds me that they finally made iggy happen, for so long she seemed a hopeless cause

we'll see about this one...

While "Yours Truly" primarily showcased Grande's powerful voice through new-school R&B songs, the singer says that her follow-up will be more expansive, with a wider list of collaborators. Electronic superstar Zedd worked on a track, which Grande says is "fantastic and super-experimental for me. I never thought I'd do an EDM song, but that was an eye-opening experience, and now all I want to do is dance."

Martin and Kotecha oversaw "a lot" of the album, while Benny Blanco, Ryan Tedder, Key Wayne and Thomas Brown all contributed to the full-length. Grande says of the legendary producer Rodney Jerkins, "We've done a song together that I think is my favorite song that I've ever done."

That description actually makes me excited.

i would be more apprehensive if we didn't already know that the song written by max martin and featuring iggy azalea that rips off macklemore and jason derulo is a banger

the verses are fine but the rest is kind of a mess... maybe i'll warm up to it eventually

still kind of love that mac miller feature

this new song is awesome

mac miller is def kind of a weird look for her but pop music is littered w/ weirdo collaborations by stars before they blew up

lol lady gaga f/ colby o'donis

I can be totally happy (no #gandalfhat) if skronky sax hooks are the big pop radio trend for 2014.

lol lady gaga f/ colby o'donis

Or Wale f/ Lady Gaga

i would be more apprehensive if we didn't already know that the song written by max martin and featuring iggy azalea that rips off macklemore and jason derulo is a banger

― le goon (J0rdan S.), Monday, April 28, 2014 11:02 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lollll otm

this song would have one less problem w/o big sean whispering though

Disappointed not to see Babyface in that list of collaborators. I read that he's been working with Ella Henderson which could be interesting.

she's the best but i dunno about

Electronic superstar Zedd worked on a track, which Grande says is "fantastic and super-experimental for me. I never thought I'd do an EDM song, but that was an eye-opening experience, and now all I want to do is dance."

"problem" is great tho

Haha, Ariana's doofy-sounding brother is on this season's Big Brother: http://www.cbs.com/shows/big_brother/cast/214878/

the zedd song is the new single and is coming next week

All of her albums are good but imo you could make an argument that this one is her best. The run from Honeymoon Avenue to You'll Never Know is amazing - heck, even the ballad with that guy from the Wanted isn't bad

yours truly = slanted & enchanted
my everything = crooked rain, crooked rain
dangerous woman = wowee zowee

It's still my favorite - the doo-wop element (which she's occasionally trotted back out on "Moonlight" etc) is in full effect here. So many of her best jams (honeymoon/baby i/tattooed heart/PIANO!/daydreamin') but after the first eight or nine songs it drops off a fukkin' CLIFF. Still, what a run

as mentioned by josh az above

my everything = crooked rain, crooked rain

Does this mean that Hands on Me is her Hit the Plane Down

Looks like she is recording and/or filming a live performance cabaret-type thing (with strings), to celebrate the album's 10th anniversary. Good news!!

anything to distract from the other stuff going on her life I guess!

It’s a reissue with the new recordings and a week of other stuff: https://pitchfork.com/news/ariana-grande-releasing-yours-truly-10th-anniversary-reissue-friday/

Oh snap, we got OG Honeymoon Ave <3

I’m pleased to report that she still sounds great (no surprise). Wish this wasn’t digital-only; maybe they’ll drop a CD at some point

Does it seem impossible to anyone else that her entire discography is only 10 years old?

Yeah totally… it’s hard to wrap my head around

Well 6 albums in 10 years is quite impressive indeed but not that crazy thinking about it. Lana has released all her 9 albums between 11 and 23 and Taylor has released 7 (new) albums between 12 and 22 for instance. But then if one compares to Rihanna…

Yes but it’s 6 ~iconic~ albums ;)

;)

Those are good comps, AIXTC; Dawn Richard and Charli XCX also released Goldenheart and True Romance, respectively, in 2013, and Jessie Ware's Devotion was 2012. So there are more than a few great artists with impressive discographies that emerged about that time.

Maybe it's connected to aging. As I get older, 10 years really doesn't feel like that long to me, but Grande's only 30 so that's more or less her entire adult life.

This Variety article brings up the six-albums-in-10-years thing (it's not entirely clear what they're getting at with this line of inquiry, but nice to see them raise the point "to be fair"):

What is perhaps most unusual about Grande and Bieber is that neither artist has released a major project under their own name in several years: Grande has released singles with the Weeknd and others but has not released any music under her own name since her “Positions” album in the fall of 2020; Bieber has dropped a few singles but his last full album was “Justice” in early 2021. The artists are 30 and 29 respectively, peak years for artists on their scale: For just two examples, at 30, Madonna released “Like a Prayer” and Justin Timberlake was at the commercial peak of his music and acting careers.

However, to be fair, Grande released six albums in seven years and has been deep in making “Wicked” for the past year; Bieber was on tour and in ill health; they’d both earned breaks, although it is a long time for such major artists to go without releasing new music.

(sorry, 6 albs in 7 years... and then a ~mysterious hiatus~ in which she's been, in part, filming two movies back-to-back... which Variety doesn't seem to accept as an excuse, lol)

I do like the idea of looking back on Wikipedia to see what other artists were doing at age 30, tho

So many of her best jams (honeymoon/baby i/tattooed heart/PIANO!/daydreamin') but after the first eight or nine songs it drops off a fukkin' CLIFF. Still, what a run

This is an old post but I wanted to build off it. I totally agree w/these sentiments – except I <3 the duet (track 10), so that really just leaves the two relatively weaker songs at the end which keep it from being an absolute classic.

“Popular” is weird b/c AG isn’t even the credited artist – it’s a reworked version of the other guy’s song, with Ariana added for the single version (and it was then stuck onto her album). “Better Left Unsaid” is an OK closer, and it’s of a piece with the album generally, but slightly below par.

Thing is, there just weren’t two more great songs on deck (I think they’re all out there). Would it have been a slam dunk to stick “Pink Champagne” and “Boyfriend Material” in those spots? Fun songs, but nah. It may have cool to end with “OG Honeymoon Avenue”… but maybe a little too “cute” a move? Anyway, with the 10th Anniversary Ed., it’s now there…

The artists are 30 and 29 respectively, peak years for artists on their scale: For just two examples, at 30, Madonna released “Like a Prayer” and Justin Timberlake was at the commercial peak of his music and acting careers.

This is such a weird argument:

1. Like A Prayer arrived nearly 3 years after True Blue, with only a remix album and some movie soundtrack tie-ins in between.

2. When Justin turned 30 in early 2011 it had been over 4 years since his last album, and it would be more than 2 years until his next one.