Review of ‘sweetener’ by Ariana Grande

I had some hopes this album might be good after lead single ‘no tears left to cry’ grew on me, but, unfortunately, I don’t quite think the album quite lived up to the promise of that track. What we got was a serviceable, but oddly dour album. The lack of vibrant instrumentation is a bit of a dealbreaker across this album. You would have thought that ‘R.E.M’, ‘successful’ and ‘better off’ could have done with more colouful production that would really flatter Grande’s huge vocal range.

But that doesn't mean to say that there aren’t moments where Grande gets to flex her tremendous range, the bridge on ‘goodnight n go’ being the standout, but considering that when placed over more dynamic production like on ‘no tears left to cry’ or ‘breathin’, Grande can sell these songs very well. I might not love either ‘the light is coming’ or ‘blazed’ all that much, but at least Pharrell Williams gave these songs some unique flare and personality which I can’t say an awful lot of the songs on this album have.

But, that being said, Grande said herself that this project was more ‘a bunch of songs that I really really like’ than a typical album, which could explain a lot of the scattershot production choices, but no where does this come through than the songwriting. Sure, there are simply framed love / crush songs like ‘sweetener’, ‘borderline’, ‘God is a women’, and ‘goodnight n go’ but there are more complex songs. On ‘everytime’ Grande is constantly being brought back to the guy she’d thought she said goodbye to for good, but ‘breathin’ might just be the most potent of the bunch as she sets her sights on the future and vows to keep her head high even in the tragedy she found herself in May 2017.

And, on that note, there are other songs that are clearly inspired by those tragic events, but ‘no tears left to cry’, ‘the light is coming’ and ‘get well soon’ all, like ‘breathin’ are more focused on looking forward rather than being stuck in the past, and there is certainly something to seeing such a young pop star deal with that whole situation as maturely as Grande does.

But overall, this is an album that undoubtedly should be better than it is. A decent, but heavily compromised pop album.

3 / 5

Best Songs: ‘breathin’, ‘no tears left to cry’, ‘goodbye n go’, ‘everytime’

Worst Songs: ‘better off’, ‘successful’