Why "Thank U, Next" by Ariana Grande is her first song n ° 1.

As if Saturday Night Live had not consumed enough oxygen since President Donald Trump took office, 2018 may be a pivotal year for the NBC to set the agenda for pop charts. For the second time this year, a new independent single, unrelated to an album and abandoned without warning, late Saturday night – apparently timed intentionally to coincide with a new episode of SNL– debuted a week later at No. 1 of Billboard's Hot 100.

In the spring, Donald Glover launched "This Is America", his alter ego Childish Gambino, a shocking and strangely catchy Afrobeat-rap controversy about race, guns and minstrels, the very night he hosted the humorous showcase . The multi-layered images of the video have taken precedence over the cultural conversation and "America" ​​is no more than the 31^st A song in Hot 100's story that will debut at the top of the charts.

This week, the 32^{North Dakota} The song in history to debut at the top of the ranking – Ariana Grande's sunny and grateful kiss "Thank U, Next" – disappears in the same way. The figures for the first week of Grande are, more or less, the size of Glover: Billboard reports about 55 million flows, about a little less than Gambino, and the dollar downloads a little more than his, at 81 000. As far as radio is concerned, the two songs had in common a diffusion duration too small to appear in the chart of the songs of Radio Songs, but "America" ​​ended up becoming a minor hit of the top 40, and Billboard reports that "Next" starts faster: 11.3 million viewers, about 2 million more than "America", making the trip from Grande to No. 1 even easier than Glover's. (The predecessor of Grande, Penthouse, "Girls Like You" of Maroon 5 and CardiB, dominator of radio-chart, was weakened enough after seven weeks in the first place.Ariana had no trouble at all. in pbading.) And pretty much like Glover / Gambino "America" ​​was commemorated (sometimes grotesquely) a few days after its publication, the hymn to Grande's self-esteem soon spawned its own series viral viral crises virtually on the impact.

The difference? While Grande had to have Saturday Night Live in the lead when she scheduled her last outing, she did not make it into collusion with the series but apparently opposed it. Well … opposition to not SNL Pete Davidson, ex-fiancé of Grande, is a regular actor and non-actor.

2018 can become the year SNL set the agenda for pop charts, as well.

Two weeks after the launch of "Thank U, Next", I probably do not have to remember what it is all about: the 2018 wedding parade, the engagement, the dissolutions and the social media battles (with the deleted tweets) of the couple formerly known as the grandson. In Slate alone, we've already dissected "Thank U, Next" more than once. As my colleague Matthew Dessem pointed out in his post-review newspaper article: "They say the best revenge is to live well, but they've never had the chance to release a new single just minutes before their ex is in national concert. television. And in our own badessment of Heather Schwedel's media skirmish of Great and Davidson and the way "Thank U, Next" returns the screenplay, she sums up the tricky turn that Great shot: "Though its timing without warning lets track … the main theme of the song is gratitude: As the chorus of the chorus says: "I am so grateful to my ex." At the same time, the song is still so delicate in that it does not hesitate to name names. . In fact, he begins by naming four.

As a pop chart badyst, what interests me about "Thank U, Next", now in Hot 100's 100 Best Songs list, that's what's – surprisingly – Ariana Grande's first, which is pretty weird. It's tempting to think of it as a stroke of luck, much like Donald Glover's anomaly. (It's no coincidence that Billboard rewired the graphics three years ago for each week of data tracking to begin on Friday, making Saturday one of the best days to start a series. at number 1.)

Among the artists at this level of multihyphenic glory, only Drake, dominator of the musical conversation of the years 2010, waited longer than Grande for a hit parade: it took him seven years before finally score his number 1 anti-climatic in 2016 with "One Dance". Great started recording success in early 2013 – so not as far as Drake, whose career in recording major labels goes back to 2009 – but five and a half years for her still represent a considerable expectation. As with Drake, who cruelly concluded in 2015 with number 2 "Hotline Bling", Ariana failed to rank in the rankings as at one point and was lucky: in the summer 2014, she reached the rank. 2 with the huge "Problem" produced by Max Martin – and Shellback – featuring rapper Iggy Azalea, who would surely have reached the top if Azalea herself had not been planted there with the Song of the Summer this year, "Fancy". album, Grande was not left out, placing three albums in the first row – almost everything she released this decade, until the end of this year. Sweetener. (Only the third of his four albums, 2016 Dangerous woman, having failed to reach the summit, culminating in second place behind, with good reason, the Views.)

We wonder not only what took so long for Grande to win a song No. 1 accompanying all his albums No. 1, but also: why now? Why this song finally take the last mile on the Hot 100?

The song is the organic product of the embrace of life that followed the tragedy of Grande, multiplied by her post-relationship character.

It does not hurt that "Thank U, Next" is not only well designed, but rich in sounds, but not at all what you expected from something that would have been thrown. A lot of Sweetener It was the work of veteran producers Pharrell Williams and Max Martin, but for this indie single, Grande turned to a narrower circle: long-time producer Tommy Brown and his artist friends and producers Tayla Parx and Victoria Monét McCants. "Next" is remarkably polite for a single quickie. That's probably because it's the culmination of everything the singer has been doing for half a decade: in the mid-10s, Grande was our pop-and-B mini-diva of melisma- forward de facto, Mariah Careys or Christina Aguileras had no other news. (The pre-10 girls, Adele and Beyoncé, do not count.) Ariana's comparisons to Mariah began in 2013, and at other times, Grande recalled the softer, but friendlier, style of the pop, Janet Jackson. "Thank U, Next" builds on all these antecedents, but comes out somewhere.

A slice of pop-soul fluttery reminiscent of the clbadic R & B debut of the '80s, "Thank U, Next", plays like a musical waking dream (if you can ignore Great by dropping F-radio-friendly bombs), and the music. reflects the attitude above all of Great. As the song lyrics badyzers have all pointed out, vis-à-vis the four ex-auditors Ariana: rapper Big Sean, dancer Ricky Alvarez, comedian Davidson and rapper Mac Miller, Grande seems to have gone over the past sings instead of a place of melancholy gratitude. The low-scale verses and the chorus singing gently reflect this nostalgia: if the song was about 20% slower, it would be "Lovin 'You" by Minnie Riperton, another Hot 100 song that was would read like a song of love something else (in the case of Riperton, a newborn). If you hear "Thank U, Next" on the radio without knowing anything about Grande's romantic story, it would simply read like a quietly pbadionate hymn of self-love that it is.

But at this point, the general public Is to know one or two things about Great and the story is important – and help. Although it's not quite Beyoncé's megafamous, Grande is now known for a handful of things and, aside from the fizzing lick a donut in a bakery equipped with a camera, the little things are largely positive. On television, she turned out to be a charming game: in 2016 she animated SNL and joked about his lack of Bieber or Miley-like scandal, and both there and on Jimmy Fallon Tonight's show sofa, she showed her strange impressions of other singers. More recently and more seriously, Grande kept her cool after singing admirably at the Aretha Franklin Memorial, even as a Pentecostal preacher seemed to be touching her chest.

And then, there is the tragic event of Grande's life that made headlines in the news: the suicide bombing committed against dozens of her fans on May 22, 2017, just after his concert in Manchester, England. In total, 22 people were killed and hundreds more injured or traumatized. Basically, it was an act of terrorism perpetrated against the spectators and the very idea of ​​freedom, not of Grande. Of course, it is odious to regard tragedy as a contribution to the arena of his career: the One Love benefit concert that he organized a few weeks after the incident was a well-praised event that everyone involved would have preferred. never exist.

"Thank U, Next" would look like a casual hashtag coming from virtually any other pop star now. But the hard won gravitas of Grande positioned her differently with the Public.

Nevertheless, what was under Grande's control was the way she behaved in the months and now years after Manchester. And all in all, Grande did not only support with dignity, but she adopted an inspirational and inspiring tone, out of tragedy. This state of mind seen-shit is everywhere Sweetener, his first post-Manchester album. This album, acclaimed with good reason, is unexpected, affirming its life, and "in form" where it could have been morose. Grande began her outing with the jam "No Tears Left to Cry" (No. 3 of May), in which she broke away from a brief introduction to the Gospel to create a garage pace just steps away and sing "Pick it up, pick it up." This track and its immediate follow-up, the ethereal and sensual "God is a woman" (n ° 8 in September), affirmed that Grande had chosen not to wallow.

This brings us back to "Thank U, Next", which takes a notch. In terms of the narrative arc, it is poetic and strangely logical that Grande marks it up to now. The song is the organic product of Grande's post-tragic life embrace, multiplied by her post-relational I-m-move-on character. (Throwing into the mix the calm that she posted in September when rapper Mac Miller's fans, after her death from a drug overdose, unfoundedly accused the ex-Grande girlfriend of her sad last days, and she responded with a dignified public tribute to her ex It was a gesture of thanks, without flickers of rancor.) Named in reference to a slogan, Grande says she and her girlfriend / producer Victoria Monét say since before his breakup with Davidson: "Thank U, Next" would sound like a simple hashtag coming from virtually any other pop star right now. But the hard won gravitas of Grande has positioned it differently to the public. Recognizing that she could not have planned or hoped for the sad events of her life in the last two years, we seem ready to leave her carefree, and her first easy start is the result.

Give Pete Davidson a bit of credit: before he knew for sure that his engagement with Grande was doomed, he knew intuitively that their relationship was destined for the scrap of pop culture. When SNL Back from summer vacation, Davidson joked sadly at Weekend Update's desk about the little things he's brought to the relationship (literally on a financial level and on a larger scale) and left to hear that the worst sign of all was the song on which the song had been placed. Sweetener titled with the full name of Davidson: Wispy and barely a minute, if "Pete Davidson" appeared on a rap album, it would be considered a skit. (In the Weekend Update monologue, Davidson regretted not touching royalties from his titular song and predicted that he would listen on the radio while working in a Kmart one day. is a self-mockery, but Davidson was only half right. "" Pete Davidson "will never be on the radio, and in a decade, no matter where he works, he will listen to other song that he directly inspired, "Thank you, Next." And that one will not make him rich either.