Ariana Grande: How the Thank U, Next singer reached 'peak popularity'

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Ariana Grande's latest album is set to debut at the top of the UK album chart on Friday.

Thank U, Next has been outselling the rest of the top five albums combined, according to the Official Charts Company.

Meanwhile, on the singles chart, she's effectively up against herself, and is highly likely to take the top two spots this week

Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored is set to debut at number two, with 7 Rings retaining the top spot it's held for the last three weeks.

If she does score both the number one and number two spot, she'll be only the second female artist ever to achieve this. (The last was Madonna, with Into The Groove and Holiday.)

'Peak popularity'

The success of Ariana's latest album is particularly remarkable for how short the gap has been between her previous album and this one.

Her last record, Sweetener, was released just six months ago, in August 2018.

But the intervening months have been turbulent for the 25-year-old.

Her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller died after an accidental overdose. Shortly after, she and her former fiance Pete Davidson broke off their engagement.

Ariana took some time out, stopped doing promo for the album and asked her team for a break.

"I said, 'I'm not going anywhere, I'm not doing anything. Please give me some time," Ariana recalled last week in an interview with Zach Sang, "and they were so respectful of that and wonderfully supportive".

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

But she was back in the studio soon enough, and released the hugely popular Thank U Next - a song which referenced not just her split from Davidson, but several of her exes, who she sang she was "so thankful" for.

However, considering she was only three months into the Sweetener album campaign with several songs already on the radio, throwing a brand new one into the mix was highly unusual.

Another new song, Imagine, followed a month later, before the monster hit that was 7 Rings was unleashed in January.

These weren't necessarily intended to form a whole new album, but, Grande explained: "I was just like, wow, I love all of these so much, this is like an album."

Recorded in two weeks

The creative team who had worked on Sweetener were accordingly called back to work on the new project.

"I called the same people back, a month-and-a-half later [after completing Sweetener], and they were like, 'why are we here?'," Grande explained to Sang.

"And I was like, 'I wanna play you an album'."

The rest of Thank U, Next was recorded in just two weeks, according to Rolling Stone.

"The first week we already had nine songs or so," explained singer-songwriter Victoria Monét.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionMac Miller and Pete Davidson are both referenced in the lyrics of Thank U, Next

"Then we spent the next week cleaning them up, adding more things, doing production, cutting a few more songs."

The album was released last Friday, not long after it was completed, and went straight to the top of the download and streaming charts around the world.

All the conventional rules were being broken - her team were nonchalant about crowding the market with two album releases in quick succession, and Ariana didn't do a single press or broadcast interview to promote the new record aside from her YouTube chat with Sang.

And yet, by the end of its first sales week, Billboard reported Thank U, Next was projected to sell 330,000 in the US, having been revised up from its original estimates.

This is a full 100,000 more than Sweetener managed in its first week.

Rather than becoming a victim of audience fatigue or radio burnout, something which often plagues over-exposed pop stars, Ariana seemed to have actively become more popular in the short time that passed between albums.

The last singer of equivalent profile to churn out albums at this rate was Rihanna.

She released one album a year for four years while she was enjoying her most popular era between 2009 and 2012.

Image captionGrande recorded a BBC One special with Davina McCall last year in one of her few UK interviews

Some have argued the increased success of Thank U, Next in comparison with Sweetener is down to a subtle change in direction from Ariana.

Not a drastic adjustment to the music itself, as the catchy R&B-tinged pop hooks have broadly remained the same, but rather a different approach to the lyrics (Ariana has a songwriting credit on every song on the new album).

Many have noticed that the lyrics are far more specific and personal to Ariana than any she has previously performed.

"It's the most Taylor Swift album she's ever released," suggested Perez Hilton.

"She has done for the first time what Taylor Swift has always done, which is turn her life into really personal songs which chronicle certain periods of their lives."

• Thank U, Next is the most obvious example of this - literally namechecking all of her famous exes one by one
• Ghostin deals with crying over your previous relationship in front of a new boyfriend. "I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again over him," Ariana sings, in what is likely a reference to her relationships with Miller and Davidson. "I'm putting you through more than one ever should."
• On Fake Smile, she sings: "I read the things they write about me, hear what they're sayin' on the TV, it's crazy. I know it's the life that I chose... If I'm hard, I ain't gon' lie about it."

Rather than the slightly more vague or generic lyrics of her previous hits (no shade), these were lines nobody else could sing.

"The singles leading up to her new album aggressively fed the gossip machine," wrote Jon Caramanica in The New York Times.

"[They] ensured that just as Grande's music was reaching its peak popularity, she was also the subject of continuous meta-musical conversation."

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionSome have likened Ariana's more personal recent lyrics to those of Taylor Swift

Some of her fans are so keen on the newly-released songs, they've started a campaign to boycott 7 Rings - which Ariana herself has acknowledged

But it's not because they don't like the song or have turned against her - but because fans are mobilising behind Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored, hoping its chart success could match its huge popularity on YouTube.

Break Up With Your Girlfriend is the only one of the new songs that came with its own music video, effectively making it the follow-up single to 7 Rings - not that declaring something an official single matters much any more in the age of streaming.

Even a public spat with the Grammy Awards on the weekend of the album's release hasn't dented her popularity.

Ariana had been due to perform at the biggest night in the music calendar last Sunday, but she and organisers reportedly fell out over which songs she would sing.

Onwards and upwards

Then, once an agreement had almost been reached, executive producer Ken Ehrlich claimed she had struggled to get a performance together in time for the ceremony.

Ariana refuted that, writing on Twitter: "I can pull together a performance overnight and you know that, Ken. It was when my creativity and self expression was stifled by you, that I decided not to attend."

Many felt it was the ceremony's loss.

"The Grammys need Ariana Grande more than she needs them," pointed out Courtney E Smith in Refinery 29.

And it didn't stop Ariana from taking home (or rather, getting delivered) her first ever Grammy - best pop vocal album for Sweetener.

It was a nice, er, sweetener, for the album to receive before the singer embarks on a world tour in support of it later this year.

(And considering she now has two albums' worth of new material, she's probably struggling with the set list.)

As she heads for the top of the UK album chart, it seems nothing can slow down her momentum.