Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Ariana Grande is 28 years old but seems younger. If you asked me how old she was I’d say, 19 or 20, a woman, for sure, but not far from the girl she was a couple years earlier. Maybe it’s the high ponytail, maybe it’s her diminutive stature or maybe it’s the way that no matter how ribald her lyrics, she seems wholesome. She seems nice. Which is good. It’s good to be nice. She’s sort of like a young Paula Abdul but with a voice closer to Mariah Carey. The Netflix concert film Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You captures the singer on tour in 2019 and reinforces all the qualities that have made her a star.
Excuse Me, I Love You was directed by Paul Dugdale, who also directed The Rolling Stones’ Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America and Taylor Swift Reputation Stadium Tour, and was executive produced by Grande and manager Scooter Braun, A.K.A. the person Taylor Swift hates most in the world. Like the aforementioned movies, it is impeccably filmed and visually arresting, the stage doused in bold colors; a devil’s red, a glacial blue, the hottest of pinks, under which Grande and her harem of dancers writhe around what appears to be an elongated middle school cafeteria table.
Though the premium is on the live show, behind the scenes footage help humanize Grande and reinforce her likability. At rehearsals, she’s focused but having fun, working out routines with choreographer’s Scott and Brian Nicholson. When not on stage, Grande fraternizes with the lighting crew and shares stories of her pets defecating in hotel rooms with her entourage. Backstage before the tour kickoff, everyone is a bundle of nervous excitement even if the first show is in Albany. The actual live footage comes from sexier destinations like London and L.A.
Like any self-respecting modern pop star, Grande got her start in children’s television, playing Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon’s Victorious. Her Middle American bonafides aside, she’s also sung some of the dirtiest double entendres this side of AC/DC. “I love the way you lick the bowl,” she sings in “Sweetener,” alluding to oral sex. In concert, the song is followed by “Side To Side,” a song about a woman having so much sex she can no longer walk straight. The odd thing is no matter how beautiful Grande and her backup dancers are, no matter how much they grope each other or how little they’re wearing, it never seems dirty.
Ariana Grande’s music is an amalgamation of every pop music trend of the last 30 years. There’s the hyperactive percussion of trap music, the subsonic bass of EDM, melodies borrowed from generations of R&B and the earworms of contemporary laptop pop, the kind that can unite a nation in singalong or drive an individual to plunge a screwdriver into their ear to make them stop. Grande cites Mariah Carey, Beyoncé and Whitney Houston as influences and cries when Carey handpicks her to appear in a video. If she lacks the raw talent and emotion of her heroes, she’s got the technical skill, able to execute complex vocal runs up into the range where dog’s begin to howl. Her voice gets better the longer the show goes on, her perfection taking on the slightest grit.
In May 2017, a suicide bomber detonated a homemade shrapnel bomb as people were leaving Grande’s show at England’s Manchester Arena. Twenty three people died and more than 800 were injured. Following the incident, Grande suffered PTSD and performance anxiety. During footage of her last European show she tells the audience, “I didn’t think I was gonna be able to do one show and now we’ve done 80-something and it’s all really thanks to ya’ll.” It’s sweet and sincere.
As the end of the show draws near, Ariana thanks her band, her dancers, her crew and the venue staff. Fans burst into tears. Old tweets and older photos and footage of her singing as a child precede the final number, the 2018 single, “Thank U, Next.” In it she thanks her former lovers by name, the ones who gave her pleasure, the others who gave her pain. Each one taught her something. Something to put in her back pocket for the future. Of course, having grown up in public, we’d know who they were even if she didn’t name them. It’s a great gimmick but more importantly, a great song, with a real heart to it, and a great way to end the show. Then she dances off the stage waving a rainbow flag.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
