原文: Profiled for a Billboard cover story in December, Ariana Grande—who had been named the magazine’s woman of the year—explained her current thinking about how she wants to go about releasing music. The pop star put out an extremely successful album, Sweetener, in August 2018, and, only a few months later—shortly after the album’s third single (“Breathin”) had officially been released—dropped a new single, “Thank U, Next,” which went on to become the most successful single of her career, spending five consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. (And the music video, in which Grande portrayed four different romantic-comedy heroines, was something of a pop-cultural supernova in of itself.) Grande told the magazine that she wants to release music when . . . she feels like releasing music, and is not worried about adhering to the typical scheduling pattern that pop stars have mostly been sticking to for decades. “My dream has always been to be—obviously not a rapper, but, like, to put out music in the way that a rapper does,” she said. “I feel like there are certain standards that pop women are held to that men aren’t. We have to do the teaser before the single, then do the single, and wait to do the pre-order, and radio has to impact before the video, and we have to do the discount on this day, and all this shit. It’s just like, ‘Bruh, I just want to ****ing talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do. Why do they get to make records like that and I don’t?’ So I do and I did and I am, and I will continue to.”
And, true to her word, she released another new song, “Imagine,” soon after, followed by, at midnight on January 18, the new single “7 Rings,” which immediately set a Spotify record for most streams within 24 hours. The “7 Rings” release—which was accompanied by a music video (now at more than 62 million views)—would have been enough to placate Grande’s large and passionate fanbase for weeks, probably, but they received additional riches Tuesday night when Grande dropped, without much in the way of warning (other than a few tweets to fans the day before), the track list for her latest album, Thank U, Next, which is due out on February 8.
The 12 song titles are all very Grande: in addition to the three previously released songs, we have tracks called “NASA,” Ghostin,” and the instantly iconic “Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored.” Grande tweeted on Monday that she already knows what the third single will be (“Imagine” was not a proper single release). She also confirmed there would be no features on the album. As for the mood of the songs, when a fan tweeted, “Dropping the album before Valentine’s Day, you gon get everybody PREGNANT,” Grande—who, as you, uh, might have heard, recently ended a high-profile relationship with S.N.L.’s Pete Davidson—replied, “oh quite the opposite.”
It is highly unusual for a star at Grande’s level—arguably at the top of the ranks right now—to release an album so closely on the heels of a previous one. But Grande does not seem at all concerned about what’s usual or typical right now—and it’s exciting! “two albums in six months huh. that’s deep. love u. talk sooon,” she tweeted on Monday. And talk to us soon she will.