Fluxblog
February 11th, 2019 1:54am

Make It Stick


Ariana Grande “Make Up”

Ariana Grande shines brightest on songs in which her voice seems to hover just above the beat, and chords seems to float around her presence. “Make Up” has the same head-in-the-clouds infatuated tone as the best songs on last year’s Sweetener, but with a little more edge to it. The lyrics about make up sex are cute, but they are just scaffolding for Grande’s impressively nimble and expressive vocal melody. She’s drawing a lot from the vocal syncopation commonly found in rocksteady and dancehall here, but without putting on some horrible faux patois. There’s one melodic bit in the verses that sounds extremely Studio One to me, but I can’t quite figure out whether or not it’s reminding me of a specific song. I just know that I wish I could hear a Studie One legend like Marcia Griffiths, Willie Williams, or Sugar Minott take a crack at singing it. Either way, this approach suits Grande’s voice rather well – she’s very graceful around a beat, and makes parts which require a great deal of focus and breath control sound breezy and casual.

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