OPINION: Ariana Grande’s Positions Album Review
Sofia Aguilar ‘21
Via Youtube, “Ariana Grande - positions (official video)” - https://youtu.be/tcYodQoapMg
On October 14, Ariana Grande surprised her 78.2 million Twitter followers and broke the whole Internet with one ten-word tweet.
“i can’t wait to give u my album this month,” she wrote, revealing the title of the album through a follow-up teaser posted to Twitter the next day. On October 29, her sixth studio album, Positions, released on streaming services worldwide in all its romantic, sexual and sugary glory.
The fourteen-track R&B and trap-pop album begins with “shut up,” a cheeky, Disney-esque retort to her critics with lines like, “you know you sound so dumb / so maybe you should shut up.”
Grande sets a lyrical precedent for the rest of the album, ditching the veiled metaphors she’s come to be known for and instead saying exactly what’s on her mind. With her impressive four-octave vocal register and whistle notes reminiscent of Mariah Carey, Grande’s songs shimmer with sensuality and playfulness and lyrics as casual as a conversation between friends or lovers engaging in pillow talk.
The song “34+35” opens with a fan-favorite line; “If I put it quite plainly / Just gimme them babies.”
Other lyrics in the song, whose title itself is a reference to a sexual position when the numbers are calculated, relate Grande’s sexual desires and mark a return to clever wordplay and well-chosen innuendos. Later in “34+35,” she sings:
“I don’t wanna keep you up /
But show me, can you keep it up? /
‘Cause then I’ll have to keep you up.”
Yet the production of the project weakens an otherwise strong display of her talent. I’d call the style of the entire album “bedroom R&B,” blending lo-fi indie influences with the mainstream hip-hop and pop sounds associated with Grande’s earlier work. Only a handful of tracks are energetic enough to be radio-friendly singles reminiscent of older Grande albums. They exemplify the style Grande has come to be known for, through songs like “Side to Side” off Dangerous Woman or “Problem” from My Everything: party anthems that are easy to memorize and gain instant popularity as soon as they are released.
Positions isn’t the radio-oriented pop that listeners are used to hearing from her; however, in an industry that values art only as a profitable commodity, it’s refreshing to listen to an album that reads more as a love letter from an artist to her fans instead of a tool to increase her public awareness and respect among critics. But Grande is so focused on producing a cohesive and intimate sound, pace and tone within the album that few of the tracks are actually memorable. Many, like “six thirty,” “nasty,” “west side” and “obvious,” play at such a similar speed and stay so comfortably within her vocal range that they could be interchangeable. It results in a sultry and romantic but ultimately flat-sounding blend that doesn’t introduce anything new or showcase her evolution as an artist.
The album shines best when Grande is at her most vulnerable and unapologetic. Its best track is the eponymous lead single “positions,” which stands out thanks to a violin accompaniment heard nowhere else on the album and offers a refreshing challenge to standard conceptions of womanhood. In another fan-favorite, “my hair,” Grande allows her partner to run his hands through her hair in an incredibly intimate touch. Its production glows from its jazz influences and a final chorus sung entirely in Grande’s stunning whistle register. In “off the table,” an emotional ballad dedicated to her late ex-boyfriend Mac Miller, she and the Weeknd duet in one of the album’s most moving vocal performances.
It’s no secret, of course, that Black musicians, songwriters, and producers are the backbone of Grande’s success. Though a talented artist in her own right, incorporating R&B and trap within her work while making it her own, she has revolutionized the pop scene, and owes her success largely to the creativity of Black artists—songwriters Tayla Pax, Victoria Monét and Leon Thomas III and musicians Ty Dolla $ign and Nicki Minaj. Her career is no one-woman operation, even if at times it appears to be.
She’s just one of many white women in the entertainment industry like the Kardashians, Bhad Bhabie, or Addison Rae who’ve been accused of blackfishing, appropriating Black hairstyles and tanning so that their appearance straddles the line between racially ambiguous at best and a light-skinned Black woman at worst.
Via Republic Records, thank u next album art
Even just one glance at the cover art for her album “thank u, next” sees Grande five or six shades darker than she appeared in her days on Nickelodeon. It certainly doesn’t help that her distinctive R&B sound originates from—and continues to be created by—Black musicians. She must be held accountable to do right by the Black artists who have shaped her sound and thus her celebrity as she continues to succeed within the industry.
Though Positions could’ve diversified its overall sound, tone, and pace, Grande continues to wow her listeners with her vocal performances, lyrical playfulness, and embrace of her sexuality without censor or apology. Positions not only glorifies the sexual roles Grande might take in the bedroom or her prowess in the kitchen, but also the ways she transforms herself into a woman who can want and have it all—ambition, power, talent, and of course, love.