ariana grande - my everything

a$ap ferg is, bizarrely enough, the real revelation of the album. had no idea he could sound as fun as that

ya this is blandsville, not even the hyperreal rictus of the first

pro tip: first quarter is more entertaining when taken as a continuation of her wrestling with the demonic visitations

darkchild arab money vs guile stage number is weird but fun

i like that you can hear her voice in these at least

There's so much sonic gunk on "Problem" that I just assumed she couldn't sing and they were doing the best that they could. But then I sought out a few unadorned clips and was really impressed by her voice. So I'm glad they're letting her show it off instead of drowning it in reverb, cut/paste takes and awkward overdubs.

Wait, were you talking about Break Free? Because that sounds terrible.

"Love Me Harder" sounds the best right now, the only time I've liked The Weeknd on anything tbh.

"Love Me Harder" is basically DWUW Pt II

But on the whole I'm actually enjoying this album - it's obviously no Yours Truly but an EDM Ariana album could have been so much more disastrous.

The instrumental on the Harry Styles one is lovely and it deserves better lyrics than his flavourless syrup.

Yeah, listening now, Love Me Harder sounds OK. Still a little too much artificial mush on her vox for my tastes - obviously she can sing, but the songs I've heard sound like they were recorded one line at a time - but I think I'd prefer this to clean vox paired to a generic piano ballad extreme.

we might as well get comfortable; she's gonna be here awhile

i didn't know there was this whole backstory about "break your heart right back" being about some gay affair or whatever, i think the meta aspect of that song is kinda disappointing in so far as the production of that song could've been so much banging had they not decided to make this blaring meta reference w/ the "i'm coming out" sample from "mo money" which structurally doesn't really work

also agree w/ whoever said that ferg sounds weirdly incredible on "hands on me"

There's a desperation to the choices: the samples, guests, the decision to make Grande's role recessive in these clotted arrangements. The album's not desperate in the mercenary let's-make-a-single-for-every-market sense; it sounds like an album assembled by people who still don't know what their client's strengths are.

It's as if the Christina Aguilera of 1999 made Back to Basics in 1999.

eh i think it's clear that they wanted to move her out of teen pop and the album definitely succeeds at that.

this album kinda reminds me of 'girl gone bad' in that it has no real "sound" and is mostly about shifting the singer's image via a general sense of attitude and a bangers over everything ethos. and like that album i think it's easy to remember and fall in love with the great songs on this record and chalk the mediocre ones up to what happens when you throw things at the wall to see what sticks.

good girl gone bad*

I don't know how one stops sounding like a teen pop artist tbh

hiring Ryan Tedder? I don't know.

and more specifically both albums really consciously untether the singer from a sound that was specific but perhaps limiting in a number of ways

i don't think rihanna has made an album better than 'good girl gone bad' so maybe this analogy portends doom for ariana as an album artist but 'yours truly' is also much better than any rihanna album so maybe her desire to sing over hyper-trendy banging pop songs and her proven ability to put together a great album qua album will congeal on subsequent records

it's also just so depressing to me, "Baby I" flopping and then having 3 anonymous bullshit songs in the top 10 in a row

*it's all just so depressing

I don't know how one stops sounding like a teen pop artist tbh

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, August 24, 2014 12:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno like 'yours truly' opens with a doo wop kinda song. at one point she literally says "i wanna say we're going steady like it's 1954". like in many ways it's very chaste.

this album is a pretty obvious veer in the opposite direction

caramanica article kinda spells it all out http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/arts/music/ariana-grande-prepares-my-everything.html

the Weeknd, dark lord of erotic shock and dysfunction

erotic shock and/or

In the NYTimes picture she looks like she is 12:

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/08/24/arts/24GRANDE1/24JPGRANDE1-blog427.jpg

this is the fart where i sit on the toilet
it's stronger than it's been before
this is the fart where i break wind
cuz i can't resist it no more

just had to put that it in someone else's head for a while

king of erectile shock and disorder

eh i think it's clear that they wanted to move her out of teen pop and the album definitely succeeds at that.

this album kinda reminds me of 'girl gone bad' in that it has no real "sound" and is mostly about shifting the singer's image via a general sense of attitude and a bangers over everything ethos.

Yeaaaaah, but Good Girl Gone Bad had proper bangers for days. This is just Ariana trying on 12 different outfits as a singer and finding only a few that work.

And the praise I've seen for the Zedd track s strange to me since it's pretty much every other Zedd track featuring a female vocalist from the last year but with worse lyrics.

surprised at how much i like the the benny blanco/ryan tedder joint on this

i have to say i'm pretty galled by the fact that i'm in love with "one more time" which was written by david guetta

I'm trying to reconcile how "Break Your Heart Right Back" is quickly becoming one of my favorite tracks on the album with the lyrics, which I find quite abhorrent

(a song Ms. Grande says was inspired by an actual situation).

Yeah, I know, I still find it gross how she's involved with a guy who she found out cheated on her w/ another guy and so he's quite possibly closeted and her first reaction is not of compassion but "omg how can I make u hurt even more", that's how I'm interpreting the lyrics

then again, she's like 20 so w/e, right

(a song Ms. Grande says was inspired by an actual situation).

whew I was beginning to think these were all fictional scenarios.

this album kinda reminds me of 'girl gone bad' in that it has no real "sound" and is mostly about shifting the singer's image via a general sense of attitude and a bangers over everything ethos.

GGGB has a really well-defined "new sound" for rihanna ie 4x4 pop-house - not throughout the album but the first half is pretty coherent, and it's that stretch that really laid the template for her/late 00s pop in general. my everything definitely has fewer club bangers - it's so haphazard that at some points i found myself wishing for a straight-up EDM album - and definitely fewer songs anything like as immediate as GGGB's defining stretch

eh i think it's clear that they wanted to move her out of teen pop and the album definitely succeeds at that.

i feel like if they wanted to do this, what needed to change wasn't her sound so much as her enunciation - that giddy word-slurring fits a lot of this material pretty badly

Have folks heard the "Target exclusive" tracks?

http://rnbxclusive.se/2014/08/ariana-grande-cadillac-song/
http://rnbxclusive.se/2014/08/ariana-grande-close/

The various bonus tracks might be the best on the album.

yeah, i like "too close" a lot. bonus tracks are so often a pleasant surprise after slogging through a disappointing album

Another totally misleading Rolling Stone review: listening to deluxe edition right now---"my baby loves fleas?"---and no way is she a "hyperactive hummingbird" whose Mariah Carey viruosity kicks the ass of every other diva on the charts---she's not even whiny! Not quite: too nerf-monotonous for that. Kind of auto-earnest at most. ASAP Ferg, please call in ASAP Rocky, Rick Perry, grab guests off the street, at gunpoint if necessary. Canned dynamics, but not the good ones.

Okay, "Just A Little Bit of Your Heart" is not bad.

" I heard/A little bit of love is better than none." True, and one good song (so far) is better than none too, thanks A.

Yes yes remixes more A$AP thank you

Close enough to whiny and always earnest enough that sappy ballads should be her go-to, not changes of pace, seriously. She's actually kinda good at 'em.

(A$AP shot the original that sounds like a remix, good) Second good sap is "My Everything," now "Bang Bang" the first up-tempo actually sufficiently bangin', "Only I"--oh I see: yet another deluxe album wrapped around a good EP.

So far, 5 1/2 ("You Think You Know" gave out of gas and kept going a while) possible keepers out of 15. A familiar ratio, but I'll keep listening after belated, by then totally unexpected goodies (the better by contrast, of course).

this is fun: http://conradtao.tumblr.com/post/98033264137/this-time-im-telling-you

i quite like this album. there's been a lot of press in mainstream media here lately about her "diva" behaviour. not sure how much of it is truth and how much is tmz-style spin

ew i clicked on a mashup what year is this

http://www.crushable.com/2014/09/19/entertainment/ariana-grande-denies-telling-fans-to-fucking-die-twitter/