"Sweetener" is Ariana Grande's third studio album from Public Records. Grande got her start with stardom as the character Cat from the beloved nickelodeon show “Victorious”. Then she hit the music scene where she began to grow in popularity quickly with her first two albums “My Everything” and “Dangerous Woman”.
Now she puts out "Sweetener" to keep the ball rolling on her success in the pop industry. Did she succeed or did she become lazy and put out a horrible piece of work? In this album, Grande did a little bit both as the album does have some good songs, with some that were terrible.
One area where Grande shines is her singing, especially in the opening interlude "Raindrop (An Angel Cried)", which is an instrumental piece that pays homage to the band The Four Seasons. Her vocals were really appealing when the beat dropped for "Blazed", which makes the track an impressive transition song.
Pharrell Williams delivered a decent feature on "Blazed", which is nothing too special, but just enough to give the song some substance. This track is all right at best with the meaning of the song not being that complex as some of her others, which was quite disappointing.
"Breathin" showed off her vocals as well. She sang over a bubbly, dreamy type of beat. This track talks about how Grande's anxiety made her feel like the sky was falling, which made her have a hard time breathing.
"No Tears Left to Cry" was also a decent track that surprisingly won an award at the MTV Video Music Awards. The song has the normal pop feel to it like some of her other tracks; however, it sounds much better than some of the other songs that she has released.
Grande also seemed to advertise this song more than others, as she posted Instagram stories and wore shirts at Disneyland to promote the single. Grande does a lot things right with the production and her vocals in some of these songs, making them fairly enjoyable.
Grande started to lose steam when she tried to rap in some of her songs, even some that already feature rappers. One thing Grande cannot do is rap and it shows in tracks like "The Light is Coming", which features Nicki Minaj. This song does have a good message about positivity, but that's about it with both artists delivering subpar lyrics.
Nicki Minaj’s feature felt empty and she talked about what she normally talks about. Grande then decides to deliver an overwhelming hook that was not pleasing at all. Then the beat behind this song was really irritating, making it the worst produced song on this album.
"Sweetener" was also a horrifying track with Grande, again, showing off her horrible hook skills. This track also had a positive message, which Grande is really good at expressing. However, the beat and the constant rapping really did not do this song any favors.
"Sweetener" does an abundance of things right, but at the end of the day her rapping and lackluster production on some songs did not help this album at all. Overall this album is a mixed bag with some good tracks and some really poor and annoying tracks. 3/5
Courtesy of BreatheHeavy.com
