![]() ![]() ![]() The poignant opener, “Imagine,” for example, revisits her first flirtations with the now-deceased Mac Miller, using dreamy waltz time, airy whistle tone … and gear-grinding clanks. If the instrumentation is distinctive, so are Grande’s vocals, which continue her career-long melding of Broadway-isms, breathiness, and tricky rap imitations. But there’s something locked in, by the book, about the underlying tunes. With Police-like guitars, sludgy trip-hop interludes, and Grande cleverly underplaying her delivery, the Martin-produced “Bad Idea” has the elements of a future-pop breakthrough. Yet it distractingly cops the melody, cadences, and even abject but defiant tone of that Gotye hit from a few years ago, “ Somebody That I Used to Know.” Elsewhere, the swirling R&B of “In My Head” slathers on Grande’s tics-including a glass-shattering vocal run in the chorus-without landing a clean, memorable hook. Yet Grande’s personal edge ensures that even the duller portions of the album will leave a mark. Rewriting mushy clichés with a wary eye, the singer empathizes with an omnipresent “you” but doesn’t ever give up agency to him. On the top-tier bop “NASA,” which evokes Grande’s sonic godmother Mariah Carey without recycling her, she kindly but firmly asks a lover for a night apart. The confessional centerpiece “Ghostin,” all whooshing synths and sad strings, appears to time warp back to her wrenching moment of mourning Miller while trying to stay connected to Davidson. Then there’s “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored,” whose story line is right in the title. ![]()
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