"IMAGINE" BY ARIANA GRANDE (2019)
or, "how to process pain"
I’m in the middle of writing an Ariana Grande deep-dive for my Tik Tok and found myself hyper-fixated on the song “imagine.”
“imagine” is the opening track to her bombshell album thank u, next, released just six months after the much-anticipated Sweetener.
The album marks the final pages in a tumultuous chapter of Ariana’s public and private life. In May of 2017, Ariana’s concert at Manchester Arena was bombed, resulting in 23 deaths and over 1,000 injuries. A year later, her former boyfriend, Mac Miller, died suddenly due to substance abuse. That same summer, Ariana began a public, whirlwind romance with Pete Davidson, which peaked at a hasty engagement and ended just six months later.
While I’m currently working on a video essay about how Sweetener cemented Ari’s status as a pop music icon, both albums must be reviewed in tandem. They’re the folklore and evermore of Ariana’s career in more ways than one — sister soundtracks to a formative time in an artist’s life, that use vulnerability to transform pain into star power.
From a pop critic’s standpoint, thank u, next has been squeezed dry by the discourse machine, which is why I want to focus on one song’s arrangement and production, rather than the tabloid headlines that inspired it.
Nobody knows us
Ariana rocked the world when she surprised dropped “thank u, next” (the song) on a Saturday night, just a month shy of her public breakup with Pete Davidson. People were shocked at how quickly the song came together, and how eager she was to release it in the middle of her Sweetener album cycle. It showed the public a side of Ariana we’d yet to see — an artist who is more than willing to skirt the traditional rules of the pop machine and take the means of production and distribution into her own hands. Fans waited two years for new music after the 2016 release of Dangerous Woman; the wait for thank u, next was less than one-fourth of that.
And though the world anticipated an album full of “fuck you” bangers and “men are trash” anthems, Ari opened thank u, next with a beautiful, sleeper hit.
“imagine” starts with a simple 3/4 drum beat, just three seconds of sparse introduction before Ari’s vocal comes in:
“Step up, the two of us, nobody knows us
Get in the car like, "Skrrt"
Staying up all night, order me pad thai
Then we gon' sleep 'til noon
Me with no makeup, you in the bathtub
Bubbles and bubbly, ooh
This is a pleasure
Feel like we never act this regular”
Immediately, we hear a departure from the ruckus-heavy production of Sweetener. This song is more confessional than anything Ariana has ever done, stripping off the ponytail extension for something natural, but still impossibly chic. The production seems to build up to the chorus, swelling through the arpeggiated rhythm through which Ariana pronounces each line:
“Click, click, click and post
Drip-drip-dripped in gold
Quick, quick, quick, let's go
Kiss me and take off your clothes”
The consonants clickclickclick together on her tongue with urgency, flitting over her lips with the delicate flair of a jazz vocalist. It’s in these tiny, musical moments that Ariana’s true skill is present; she can belt all she wants, but her restraint is just as powerful.
And just as the music builds to a predictable climax, the chorus pulls back completely. Ariana’s extended notes hang in silence, wavering and true, scared yet resolute, broken-hearted and mending in the most painful ways, like scar tissue over bleeding stitches.
Her lyrics are simple, yet sad:
“Imagine a world like that
Imagine a world like that
…
Why can’t you imagine a world like that?”
Tabloid speculation aside, “imagine” stands alone as a heartbreaking truth. Sometimes wanting what you can’t have is not about your desires but about someone else’s inability to feel as deeply as you do. It’s a punishing reality to love as deeply as this song illustrates, which is why it is one of her best records and will stand the test of time.
I could analyze this song beat for beat, line for line, even breath for breath. When we talk about honest and vulnerable performances, we often picture someone stripping down their music to the barest bones, acoustic guitar and shaky vocals. But here, Ariana shows us a different version of vulnerability, one that only a skilled actress — or someone in the perennial spotlight — can dare to master. It’s the kind of honesty that hides behind technical beauty, synchronized beats and years of vocal training. It’s taking her voice to the brink of cracking but always maintaining her composure, knowing she could break if she wanted to, but she’d never let it get that far. It’s knowing exactly how much pain you can handle and training yourself to watch that point from afar, daring it to get closer, but never allowing it to swallow you whole.
For a playlist of every song featured in literally one song, click here.