means i wanna sixty-nine with yu, no…shit
(mumbling) math class, never was good
– 34+35, Positions
Living under possibly the most draconian public scrutiny, Ariana Grande steered through the tumulous years of her rising music career accompanied by a terrorist attack during tour, several relationship melt downs, meanwhile delivered two of the best albums—and one of the highest-grossing tours—of 2018 and 2019. That she might finally be experiencing some release, which is what her return album in 2020 Positions sound like.
Positions is light-heartedly flirtive, reflective of the artist’s attitude in both her life and musical pursuit, right before she got engaged and married to Dalton Gomez. A flow of slinky giddiness propels the album. Supple strings, effortless yet perfect vocal runs mixed by scintillating production and absentmindedly playful references all were juxpotased to create a perfected formula that straddled a new line between pop standards, traditional R&B and modern rap production.
Anyway, it seems that the line between “seriously musically inclined” and “just-for-fun” does not bind as contraints for Ariana Grande at all, as she dances in supple in her music between these senses. On one side, the songs suffers a bit from their sanitized precisions, but the scrupolous, gorgeous production touched an excellency that is seldom reached in the music industry elsewhere, over these recent years.
And there are 34+35. The second track following the opening track “shut up”, an elegant, critic-panning middle finger sticked out of layers of swelling strings, pizzicato verse riff, and multi-tracked chorus harmonies. In 34+35, the strings are a little more bouncier, flirtier and sunnier, like a Disney princess singing the praises of sixty-nining while skipping through a meadow surrounded by an audience of doe-eyed animals. Luscious melodies carried out a slew of slinky sexy jams, that the artist almost sang with the angelic, innocent voice possible for “can u stay up all night/f*ck me til’ the daylight?/thirty-four thirty-five”. The song’s blatantly yelping for love and sex (“just gimme them babies”) pushes a sense of sweet goofiness to so extreme an extent that renders any blame of vulgar to absurdity.
Reference
Positions album review (2020). solrage. sputnik music.
Album review: Positions (2020). Dani Blum PitchFork.
Ariana Grande’s Dirty Mind Takes Center Stage on ‘Positions’ (2020). BRITTANY SPANOS. Rolling Stone.