Ariana Grande’s albums invariably feature at least one so-called ‘bad-girl anthem’. Take her debut album ‘Yours Truly’, arguably the most innocent of her career, which includes the sultry track The Way. This song is a collaboration with her then-boyfriend Mac Miller, and it famously includes the line, “I got a bad boy, you must admit it.” Her subsequent albums—My Everything and Dangerous Woman—further shaped her image as a love-craving icon. Even Sweetener offers R.E.M., which lyrically flirts with:
Boy, you’re such a dream to me…
“Excuse me, ummmm… I love u. I know that’s not the way to start a conversation, trouble.”
A recent unreleased song, fantasize, originally penned for a Korean pop group and never officially released, has since become a top TikTok background music hit. Grande reflects on the song’s reception:
I love [the original] song. I’ve always wanted to reimagine it in some way. [I got the idea] when I saw my fans’ reaction to “Fantasize” because they love it so much… I kind of was like ’this is a very bad idea, I think’, but there is a large group of my fans that really do love a bad girl anthem, and this is kind of an elevated version of that.
–– Grande discussing “Fantasize” with Zach Sang
Her latest album eternal sunshine includes the track the boy is mine.
‘The boy is mine, I can’t wait to try him.’
The music video, released yesterday, follows a similar theme to yes, and. It enriches whatever Ariana Grande is trying to convey and enhances the song. I’ll delve deeper into its analysis tomorrow.