Staying safe, but sassy

The building on the quiet Los Angeles block with a plate on the door that reads “Believe” — here are the offices of Scooter Braun, Svengali to Justin Bieber. Upstairs in the back is a room filled with old arcade games and the full gamut of Bieber accolades, including a piece of paper taped to the wall identifying him as Gossip Bang Chinese Fans’ Choice Male Hottie 2013, whatever that might be.

A couple of weeks ago, Ariana Grande — signature high ponytail, her late grandfather’s slouchy jacket, go-go boots with gem-encrusted soles — was sitting in this room, just a bit agitated, but playing it cool. On the table was an array of water bottles hand-lettered to spell out My Everything, the name of her second album.
The CGI-heavy, sci-fi-theme video for her new single, Break Free, was about to be released, and she hadn’t had the chance to approve it or even see the finished version. Braun, her music manager, was doing his best to reassure her, popping in with updates, to which Grande batted her eyelashes in a manner that suggested she could handle this; yes, but she’d rather not have to again.

Stepping it up
Grande may be prim, but she is not soft. Since the release of The Way, her debut single last year, Grande, 21, has been on a quiet campaign to rewrite the expectations of young, female pop star presentation, generally avoiding hypersexuality. She’s also challenged the idea that in order to move forward from a child star past — she was a Nickelodeon fixture for years — one must make an aggressive turn toward thematic maturity. In the middle of the peak Miley Cyrus era, this felt like a revelation. “I wanted it to be ‘Oh, wow, listen to this,’ not, ‘Oh, wow, look at this,’” Grande said.

Yours Truly, her 2013 debut album, was an unlikely collision of flamboyant, 1990s pop-R&B with 1950s Puritanism — novel and, at the time, unfashionable. “I wanted to be a little ‘50s pinup girl,” she said. “A good girl, goody two shoes, Audrey Hepburn, classic, safe, feminine, soft, girlie.” She asserted her maturity by not making the aesthetic choices that would likely be expected of a singer of her age and provenance — high-energy dance-pop, or hip-hop carpetbagging — but kept her music largely clean.

“We had the liberty to take that risk because of who she was,” Braun said, acknowledging her built-in fan base.

A sterling singer with impressive range, Grande was a genuine presence — and for those who hadn’t seen her on the kids’ show Victorious, an out-of-nowhere one — and had cultivated a mien just shy of coquettish. It often felt as if a wink were forthcoming, but never arrived.

My Everything walks an even finer line. Grande is sassier than before and more overt in places, too, but much of her music is still painted over with a sheen of approachability and safety. The new album is also less specific in its reference points. Grande aspires to be a full-service pop star; she just has a different idea about the path there.

The lead single is Problem, a brassy push and pull between sweet and sultry, helped out by the rappers Iggy Azalea and Big Sean; it peaked at No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Break Free is a successful dance-pop collaboration with the producer Zedd that maintains club bona fides without anonymising the singer. Same goes for One Last Time.

Break Your Heart Right Back, which features Childish Gambino, is a familiar slice of hip-hop soul about getting cheated on, not with another woman, but with a man (a song Grande says was inspired by an actual situation). And a pair of ballads, A Little Bit of Your Heart and My Everything, make room for Grande to exercise her vocals uncontested by aggressive production.

Striking the right note
She came to Broadway as a teenager and began seriously writing songs at around the same time, using a Boss RC 50 looping machine, trying to emulate her hero, Imogen Heap. Though she longed to make music full time, she was pushed toward acting after moving to California and, before long, landed the role of the sidekick Cat on the Nickelodeon show Victorious, a role that would become a launching pad and a cage. For a sensitive kid, fame of that sort had an advantage: “I really loved being able to spend some of the most important years of my personal growth hiding behind a character,” she said.

But as a musician, it was frustrating. For years Disney peers like Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers released albums that effectively doubled as advertisements for their TV characters, a fate Grande was hoping to avoid. One early song she recorded in 2011, right when she was signed, was going down that sugary path. “It was almost like if the character I was playing put out an album, that would be the lead single of her album,” she recalled.

So she recalibrated, seeking out collaborators who would respect her voice and opinion, eventually finding writer and producer Harmony Samuels, who helped mold the first album. As a result, Yours Truly effectively escaped the child-star curse.
But Grande was still a child star. Her goofy Victorious character was given a spinoff show, Sam & Cat, which had its premiere just as Grande’s first single was gaining traction.

Conveniently, the show was canceled after just one season, amid rumors of tension between her and her co-star Jennette McCurdy, though Grande stiffens just a bit at the suggestion. “I wanted to continue doing the show,” she said, though continuing to play Cat was draining in terms of time and creativity. The show’s cancellation allowed for a definitive break from her past and the freedom to pursue music full time. “That was the universe kicking everything into place,” she conceded.

She’s largely unconcerned about losing her old fans, who are growing up, themselves. “The stuff they say to me online is quite shocking,” she said with mock horror. “They’ve got the filthiest mouths I’ve ever heard. But so do I. I don’t advertise that online, though. But I favourite it; I be re-Vine-ing their Vines.”
She added, “Maybe one day I’ll get away with something naughty.”