A Pop-Star Narrative Soars Above Sorrow

No pop career should ever have a terrorist attack as a milestone. The bombing right after Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester, England, in May 2017 is one inevitable backdrop to her fourth studio album, “Sweetener.” Released on Aug. 17, the album zoomed to No. 1.

“Sweetener” (Republic) begins with the brief, mournful, a cappella “Raindrops (An Angel Cried)”: a verse of the Four Seasons song “An Angel Cried.” And it ends with vocal harmonies in “Get Well Soon,” a compendium of sympathy and 21st-century advice — “Unfollow fear and just say you are blocked” — that also promises, “I’ll be right there just to hug you.” The length of the track, including a long silence at the end, is 5:22, memorializing the day of the attack.

But Grande, 25, won’t let sorrow take over her pop-star narrative. Album by album, she has constructed a persona of cheerful female empowerment. She’s not a woman battling her way forward. She’s simply commandeering what she has always deserved and fully expects, including authority, devotion and pleasure.

Grande backs up her statements with song-and-dance mastery. Although she has learned plenty from Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Madonna, Michael Jackson and many others, her own voice is immediately recognizable. It can be silky, breathy or cutting, swooping through long melismas or jabbing out short R&B phrases; it’s always supple and airborne, never forced. With “Sweetener,” she has reaffirmed that the lightness of her voice is best suited for bliss and satisfaction, not mourning.

The first single from “Sweetener” was “No Tears Left to Cry,” a conspicuous pivot. The track starts out sounding like an elegy, but only for its first 20 seconds; then it speeds up to become a dance track, turning to positive thinking and a focus on the here and now. Grande chants, “I’m loving and living and picking it up,” and insists, “We way too fly to partake in all this hate/We out here vibing.”

She makes her joy autobiographical — and musically experimental, with wandering harmonies and eccentric percussion — in “Pete Davidson,” a minute-long track named after her fiancé (a “Saturday Night Live” comedian) that exults, “Gonna be happy, happy,” and in “Successful,” which un-humbly brags, “It feels so good to be so young and have this fun and be successful/I’m so successful!”

The album’s central manifesto is “God Is a Woman,” a minor-key processional that ascends to a churchy chorus. Borrowing a tactic from Madonna, it conflates sexual and religious passion: “Baby lay me down and let’s pray/I’m telling you the way I like it, how I want it,” Grande coos. In the song’s video clip, Madonna’s voice makes a cameo appearance as the voice of God, vowing vengeance; then Grande shatters a glass ceiling. But Grande’s attitude is post-Madonna; it’s not a matter of blasphemy and taboo-breaking anymore, just an announcement of what she’s entitled to.

The sacred-secular juxtapositions continue in the title song, a Pharrell Williams production that switches between gospelly piano chords — as Grande praises how her man can “bring the bitter taste to a halt” — and more dissonant hip-hop as she enjoys how “you make me say ‘oh!'”

Grande works with two main producers on the album, Williams and longtime pop hitmaker Max Martin (who is joined as usual by assorted collaborators). Williams pushes toward hip-hop’s loops and angularity, letting Grande divide and redivide rhythms in songs like the dream-logic reverie of “R.E.M.” Martin prefers symmetry and more standard pop storytelling.

But both of them know their truest asset: Grande’s voice. They open up ample space for it between purring low bass and the snap of (sampled or synthetic) snares and high-hats. Nearly everything else is Grande: lead and backup vocals, melodies and asides, teasing and yearning, motion and afterglow and togetherness. She’s her own choir, support group and posse. While a few guest vocalists (Williams, Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott) provide a little grit for contrast, Grande sails above any fray, past or present. Her aplomb is her triumph.