Dangerous Woman

“You need a bad girl to blow your mind,” Ariana Grande taunted us in 2014 on “Bang Bang,” her smash-hit collaboration with Jessie J and Nicki Minaj. In that crowd, Grande didn't really seem like the bad girl; maybe she knew one she could fix you up with? As she told Complex the year before,“I don’t see myself as sexy and I’m not comfortable being sexy and dressing sexy. I don’t see myself ever becoming a sex symbol.” But she seems to have taken the “Bang Bang” lyric as a mood-board inspiration for her third album Dangerous Woman, which finds the 22-year-old trading in the mini-skirts, go-go boots, and cat ears for a Sasha Fierce-like alter ego. As a result, Grande spends most of Dangerous Woman coyly flirting with desire, “bad decisions,” and independence. “Something about you makes me feel like a dangerous woman,” she sings on the chorus to the slow-burning title track, which is a few qualifications away from actual danger. There's something about the whole album that feels a bit like Sandy in her skintight leather outfit at the end of Grease, only in Ari’s case, it’s a latex bunny mask.

At this point, there’s no question that Grande is a powerhouse vocalist, having earned her comparisons to Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Christina Aguilera circa *Back to Basics. (*Among her spot-on impersonations of those singers, Grande does an absolutely insane Aguilera impression, solidifying her spot as the diva’s millennial incarnation.) Grande’s four-octave range, impeccable control, and penchant for belting assures that no matter the lyrics or production, her music will always be strong in that regard. And as in her previous album My Everything, which was chock-full of bangers like the Zedd-produced “Break Free,” the production on her new Dangerous Woman is enormous, full of flirty pop eruptions and slinky dancefloor seductions. "Into You," produced and co-written by Max Martin and Alexander Kronlund, who helped pen some of Robyn’s best songs, might be Grande's best single since “Love Me Harder.”

So then where does Dangerous Woman struggle? In a rather forthcoming interview with Billboard, Grande described the album as “a 22-year-old girl comes into her own trying to balance growing up, love, and a lot of other bullshit along the way.” However, the listener comes away from Dangerous Woman feeling like they still don’t know much about the ponytailed lady peeping out from behind the mask. Grande has never touted herself as a Swiftian friend to all fans, but her slight reserve means that Dangerous Woman, paradoxically, feels safe, which acts in contradiction to the at least 19 times she sings a variation of “danger” or “dangerous” on the record.

*Dangerous Woman *opens with “Moonlight,” which was originally the title of the record and thusly should perhaps be viewed as a prologue. “Moonlight” offers the album’s closest thing to a ballad, all celestial romance and melismas. But its serenity is quickly steamrolled over by “Dangerous Woman,” the real introduction to the record. “Dangerous Woman” is a slinky, empowered, Bond theme of a belter; you can practically picture her sauntering down a grand staircase in a floor-length gown and fur on the way to seduce and destroy a lover. After the quake of “Dangerous Woman,” “Be Alright” and “Into You” are appropriately both cool, snappy little thumpers.

In the middle of this 15-track record, Dangerous Woman’s guest features feel underused and lackluster. Nicki Minaj’s verse on “Side to Side” is a far cry from the duo’s Pinkprint collaboration “Get on Your Knees” which found both women returning to the personalities of “Bang Bang,” Ariana as a doe-eyed vixen, Nicki as the tough-as-nails Queen. That chemistry is absent here and instead Minaj’s bored, reggae-tinged verse compliments neither women. Although Minaj once again relies on the sexual wordplay her last name provides, the verse feels rather PG. Lil Wayne’s appearance on “Let Me Love You” was one of Dangerous Woman’s more surprising features, yet perhaps predictably, Weezy seems sleepy. He manages to throw out the cringe-worthy line “She grinding on this Grande, oh lord,” and not even the obligatory “moolah baby!” saves him from sounding half-hearted.

Perhaps the most unsatisfying collaborator is Future. A majority of his contribution is repeating the song’s title, “Everyday,” making him Dangerous Woman’s more minimalist version of Big Sean on “Problem.” If Future’s sexual-devotion-filled verse was taken away, it would be immediately obvious that “Everyday” is constructed atop a pile of hot fluff. The only exception to this is Macy Gray’s “Leave Me Lonely,” which sets Gray’s raspy pipes against Grande’s flawless vocals, adding a welcome change of consistency. Smack in the middle of all these features is “Greedy,” a romp that announces that Grande truly shines when she is given center stage.

The second half of the record lacks the energy of the first. She continues to sing of growth and maturity from a former self (“I used to let some people tell me how to live and what to be but if I can’t be me then fucks the point?”) with the point being that she is now free in thought and action. As Minaj says on “Side to Side,” “young Ariana run pop.” This is indeed evident on Dangerous Woman, even if the results are uneven at times. Grande does not need to force any sort of spirit, she is full of it already. She just needs to find the Dangerous Woman within herself and let her break free.