Of course I'd heard of Ariana Grande before the thing that happened that meant everybody had heard of her. She is a major pop star, I write about pop for a living and her songs are as immediate as a vodka shot, made for impact. You don’t have to be the target audience for them to make an impression, but, still, I wasn't a fan as such. I don't think I was meant to be either – her music is aimed at teenage girls and I'm more than twice that age, and a man. Knowing something is good is different from loving it and that is where I was with Grande, until that thing happened, and the next day, I listened intently and found with her confirmation and celebration of how pop music can make you feel: bold, happy, alive.
My second favourite song she had done was "Focus" – a sleek, smart EDM-flecked banger that sounded like something En Vogue might have done if they wanted a chart hit this century. It had a horn breakdown. Who doesn't love a horn breakdown? My favourite, though, was "One Last Time", with its steel drum rhythm and chorus that soared somewhere you might go to at about 2am in a dance tent at a festival, having just met your mate's mate Greg and handed over £20. When she played it at the end of her main set at that commemoration concert on the BBC that the entire country welled up in front of, it was the most emotional live music I had seen – even more so than Coldplay doing a cover of a Viola Beach track at Glastonbury, and that ruined me. So, yes, my interest was secured.
What would she do next?
Every year, I compile a "Best Of" playlist consisting of 12 songs. The one for 2018 is, of course, still in progress, but among the usual suspects on things such as this – Jon Hopkins, Childish Gambino, Father John Misty – I have "No Tears Left To Cry" by Grande. The song was her comeback, released in April with a video that twisted about so much it made me feel a bit sick. Sort of like Interstellar in a hall of mirrors. The sound is more of the dance-pop she has perfected over time, but there was a new gravitas to it as well.
Maybe that's imagined. Maybe everything about her feels more grave than it did. Is the cover for her forthcoming album, Sweetener, out in August, an upside down photo of the singer because her world was turned upside down last year? Who knows. But "No Tears Left To Cry" is brilliant without the backstory: a song about getting over something by not moping and, instead, going large.
Has there ever been a better mantra for self-improvement than "Ain't got no tears left to cry / So I'm pickin' it up, pickin' it up / I'm lovin', I'm livin', I'm pickin' it up"? Doubt it. It is the sound of the unlocking and the lift away – or somebody sticking two fingers up at the bad world and only hanging out in the good one. Christ, she's only 24. Twenty-five next week. Given what's happened to her, everything from now on is extraordinary. That she is tackling life with grace and wit is simply out of this world.
There is no other pop star I admire as much right now, possibly ever, and it isn't only because of what most people know her for. Rather, in public, she is a paragon. It's daft to say we'd all like to be like her, because, of course, we don't want to face what she did in order to get to where she has to be now, but as human beings go, she seems pretty hard to beat – hugely talented and unfailingly optimistic too. It's very, very hard to be one of those things, so to perfect both is impressive. Pop stars don't have to be role models. In a way, they are more entertaining when they're not. We enjoy the car crash and have vicariously lived through many demises. Yet, isn't it nice to have one that has kept it together, when it would have been easier to fall apart? One, like Grande, that makes us feel bold, happy, alive?
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