Florida-born singer Ariana Grande, a former Broadway actress, debuted with the album
Yours Truly (2013), inspired by the doo-wop groups of the 1950s,
and the conventional, upbeat, pop-soul-hop of The Way (composed by six
veteran songwriters).
She targeted the dancefloor on My Everything (2014) with the
seismic rhythm of
Problem (co-composed by
Ilya Salmanzadeh who wrote Jennifer Lopez's First Love
and by Max Martin who wrote Britney Spears' Baby One More Time),
Break Free (reminiscent of the house music of the
1990s, composed by house producer
Anton "Zedd" Zaslavski), and the stormy techno-tinged Love Me Harder (a duet with
the Weeknd, co-composed again by Max Martin).
The next album, Dangerous Woman (2016), turned the innocent teenager
into a sexy woman, and was even more oriented towards the dance party,
for example the reggae-fied single Side to Side, composed by
Ilya Salmanzadeh, Max Martin, Savan Kotecha and Alexander Kronlund,
four of the main composers of the album.
Sweetener (2018) updated her sound to the age of trap and dubstep
and yielded fashionable singles such as
No Tears Left to Cry and
God Is a Woman (both co-composed by usual suspects
Salmanzadeh, Kotecha and Martin).
The trap-infected
Thank U Next (2019) was even more successful, breaking all sorts of
records for online views with its singles
Thank U Next (possibly her best) and 7 Rings, both composed by the sextet of
Victoria Monet,
Tayla Parx,
Njomza Vitia,
Kimberly Krysiuk,
Tommy Brown and Social House (the duo of Michael Foster and Charles Anderson),
while Break Up with Your Girlfriend I'm Bored was the typical
Martin-Salmanzadeh-Kotecha concoction.
This was the quintessential bubblegum-pop music of the time
(NASA, Bad Idea).
Another hit was her collaboration with Lady Gaga, Rain on Me (2020).
The sex concept
Positions (2020), mostly produced by Tommy Brown,
contains insignificant and over-produced songs like
Positions and 34+35.
In August 2021, Ariana Grande joined the bandwagon of the metaverse and performed live on Fortnite.
