“Moonlight” opens Dangerous Woman, and it’s perfectly suited to her strengths. The hook relies on the kind of electronic vocal manipulations we associate with a weaker voice, say Selena Gomez, but the verses are Grande at her mewling best. “Let Me Love You” finds her feeling jealous and deliciously vindictive. Other artists might have spent the whole song panting, but when Ariana sings, “Boy you got me walking side to side,” it’s done with an eye-roll and a smile. When it comes to sex, she’s at her best when she takes a sly approach, like on “Side To Side”, where she’s been fucking so much that she can’t walk straight.
Do those seem like unfair comparisons? Well, it shouldn’t as those are her projected peers. There’s something missing, something like Beyonce’s sensual ache or Rihanna’s raw hunger. The song itself is a lot of fun, but it’s not the kind of performance that’s going to lead to an increase in worldwide pregnancies. But when she sings, “Something about you makes me want to do things that I shouldn’t,” her tone suggests she means jaywalking, or perhaps sorting recyclables into the trash. On the title track, she coos over a slinky guitar. Grande is technically perfect, and can tease, flirt, love, and lose as well as anyone in pop - but she falls short in lust.
We have an answer of sorts with Dangerous Woman, which she pulls off with a minimum of featured help. The question became: “Can she carry a song on her own? Obviously she has the pipes, but does she have the force of personality?” That’s a lot of hits, but they came alongside a lot of big names. She hit #2 with Iggy Azalea on “Problem”, #3 with Jessie J and Nicki Minaj on “Bang Bang”, #4 with Zedd on “Break Free”, and #7 with The Weeknd on “Love Me Harder”. Less than a year later she was back with My Everything and a more contemporary sound, complements in large part of Martin. On her debut album, 2013’s Yours Truly, she explicitly invited the Mariah comparisons by soaring into her whistle register over the kind of ’90s R&B beats that Ms. Shouldn’t Ariana Grande have at least one? Katy Perry has had nine, and Britney Spears has had four. Mariah Carey had eighteen number one hits. And yet, all of the other superstars I just mentioned have bested her on the Billboard Hot 100. She’s had two number one albums and is poised for a hat trick.
As Ariana Grande has proven over her three records and nineteen singles, one thing she can definitely do is sing. Since then pop guru Max Martin has penned most of her hits Martin had already taken Katy Perry to the top of the pops, and Perry couldn’t sing her way out of a Victoria’s Secret bag. She jumped from Nickelodeon to radio in 2011 with a voice like Mariah, a children’s TV resume like Britney, and a sense of style that recalled Lolita. Most reasonable people would call Ariana Grande a huge success, but her unreasonable talent makes success relative.
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