video review: 'my everything' by ariana grande

Hopefully this'll satisfy everyone who kept requesting that I talk about this.

Anyway, next up will be Imogen Heap. Stay tuned!

album review: 'my everything' by ariana grande

It's been an eventful year for Ariana Grande.

And let's be fair here, it wasn't exactly like 2013 was a bad year for her, considering the breakthrough success of 'The Way' and to a lesser extent with 'Baby I', songs that did a fair amount to showcase her talent and did enough for me to review her debut album Yours Truly. Which, for the most part, I quite liked: the songwriting was well-framed and complimented Ariana Grande's image and delivery quite well, and it featured a fair few songs that really stuck with me, including her collaboration with Mika 'Popular Song', which landed on my list of my favourite songs of 2013. Sure, I didn't think the instrumentation and production was all that stellar, but I figured that would be something that would take a little time to iron out.

Now one element I noticed about that debut is that even though Ariana wanted to distance herself from her Nickelodeon sitcom roots, her material was still fairly 'innocent', all things considered. Sex and sexuality were referred to through innuendo, the romance took center stage, and the songs had a much lighter tone - and like someone who has seen so many teen starlets go down this road before, or even Ariana's vocal predecessor Mariah Carey, I knew that pristine image wasn't likely to last, especially as Ariana rocketed up the charts and as of this recording has three songs in the Billboard Hot 100. And with a larger stable of writers and collaborators jumping behind her, you could tell that the marketing push was looking for this album to sell a lot. Yours Truly was the warm-up, this was the real deal, so how's the record?

the top 50 best songs of 2013 (PART ONE: 50-26)

Part One, songs 50-26! Enjoy, and stay tuned for part two!

video review: 'yours truly' by ariana grande

Last of the first wave of September albums is here, folks, with a review of Ariana Grande's 'Yours Truly', a pop R&B singer with a beautiful voice and some great songwriting. Shame the production isn't quite there, but what can you do?

Now, a bit of a break before the next big wave around the 9th. As I said, busy month.

album review: 'yours truly' by ariana grande

Believe it or not, I am not a teenage girl.

I know, right? It's so hard to tell, particularly given my music tastes! I mean, I like  Ke$ha and Avril Lavigne (well, most of the time) and Colette Carr and Natalia Kills and I used to watch Glee and I'm one of the three internet critics who gave Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez a fair shot and probably the only one who'll provide that same courtesy for Miley Cyrus! I guarantee you that a whole swathe of the reviews of Miley's material will focus on her oh-so-controversial VMA performance instead of her actual music, or will completely ignore the fact that she was tied to one of the best songs of the year ('Ashtrays and Heartbreaks' by Snoop Lion - not kidding).

But that got me thinking again - why do I like this music in comparison with my general distaste for the typical material teenage boys usually like (all the hard rock and associated genres of metalcore and electrocore)? But really, the answer was pretty simple: outside of hip-hop and rap (and even occasionally within that genre), I have a seriously hard time suspending my disbelief and buying into the ridiculous facades of masculinity that these bands like to promote. Even back in 2007 when I was a teenager, I was listening to Nightwish and Blind Guardian and I was much more impressed by their force of personality and subject matter than the whinging and swaggering self-aggrandizement of the metalcore, hard rock, and screamo scenes. Yes, I'm not going to deny that there occasionally was scraps of talent in those scenes, but I never found it remotely compelling.

So why do I, unlike some critics, tend to give the artists aimed at the opposite gender more of a pass? Well, if I look a bit closer, I can say that most of the acts that I like as a part of that group tend to be gunning for the same 'toughness' appeal, going for confrontational, but the ones I like also add flavours of nuance to that confrontation besides plain anger (which is probably the reason I'm no big fan of Beyonce or Carrie Underwood). And you know, maybe it's just me, but it sounds a lot more real and emotionally complex coming from Ke$ha or Pink or Avril Lavigne (well, most of the time), and part of it is because I think they're genuinely trying harder. Let's be honest, most guys don't have to try all that hard to sound intimidating or angry or to impose their presence, and with rare exception, the record industry tends to respond with some skepticism whenever women attempt to match their male counterparts. Yes, it's aggravating and unbelievably sexist (don't even try denying this, guys, the shit women go through in the record industry is miles worse than anything most guys go through, particularly if they're working in a male-dominated genre like rock, rap, or metal), but that means the ones that succeed work all the harder (or they sell out). And I like seeing effort in music, and I respond well to it.

Ariana Grande, on the other hand, doesn't appear to fit the mold of a female pop singer I would normally like. Leaping straight from the teenage sitcom Victorious and styling herself as a pop/R&B act most closely imitating Mariah Carey (I'll come back to this), Ariana Grande notched her first big hit this year with 'The Way', which only seemed to play up the fact that she was a young, girly teenager (even though she's 20), all bubbly and excitable and very, very innocent. In other words, she seemed to be taking the polar opposite route of her contemporaries in Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus and was downplaying her sexuality in order to preserve her fanbase following her over from her shows. Okay, not a bad plan, considering how brutally Miley's fanbase revolted when she made her transition from Hannah Montana. But at the same time, I didn't really have high hopes for her debut album, Yours Truly, expecting it to be the sort of cheaply-produced, High School Musical-esque dreck that catered to the lowest common denominator of her fans. Did I get what I expected?