A little over five months after the release of her fourth studio album, “sweetener,” Ariana Grande is back with her second album in six months, “thank u, next.” The former, which broke the global weekly record in streams for a female artist and included hits such as “God is a woman” leaves a tough act to follow for Grande. “sweetener” also carries quite a different vibe, with more barebones instrumentals with guitar and piano ballads as opposed to the spacey electronic trap style of  “thank u, next.” The two albums also vary greatly in theme. “sweetener” was centered around themes of women empowerment and letting go of all stress. Ariana claimed on that album that she had “no tears left to cry,” and had to “just keep breathin’ and breathin,’” but was she ready to put those claims to test? The past couple months has put that state of mind into question. As a response to the bad things in her life, she released “thank u, next.”

In the span of time between the two album releases, Ariana cut off her engagement with SNL star Pete Davidson and endured the passing of ex-boyfriend Mac Miller. She addresses dealing with these issues on her new album, singing about her forms of coping as well as self-love. These themes were highlighted by songs such as “thank u, next,” where Ariana reflects on past relationships and “7 rings,” where she sings (and raps) about shopping sprees and her six best friends. These two songs, along with “imagine,” where Ariana sings about her ideal honeymoon, were released as singles before the release of the entire album on Feb. 8, 2019. The first two songs both reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as singles.

Upon the album’s release, all of its additions shot up the charts. This album is nearly flawless in terms of its tracklist, but the problem that arises with having so many good songs on a record is that some do not live up to the standards of the rest. The songs “in my head” and “fake smile” seem to suffer from this. Among this pool of songs, a few that caused the rest to seem worse than they are include “bloodline,” “bad idea,” “NASA,” and “ghostin.” Both “bloodline” and “bad idea” are reiterations of the typical pop anthems that Ariana puts out, both being about having a fling with someone, but not wanting a relationship with that person. “NASA” is a fun, space-inspired song with a futuristic beat where Ariana intertwines the themes of needing space in a relationship with literal space exploration, hence the title. “Usually, I would orbit around you, but gravity seems to be the only thing that’s pulling me, you’ll be my rise and shine soon as them stars align,” sings Grande. “Ghostin” on the other hand takes a complete 180 in terms of genre; a slow, sad song about a troubled relationship, which is rumored to be inspired by Ariana’s breakup with Pete Davidson following Mac Miller’s death. “I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again over him… instead of ghostin’ him,”

“Break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” is another hit on this record, and is the last one on the album. Throughout the entirety of the playlist, Ariana reflects on her rough recent past in terms of relationships, and this closing track looks ahead to her future, albeit in a controversial way. The song is pretty self explanatory, as the title is indicative of the theme of the song. Grande wants a person of interest to break up with his girlfriend, so he can be with her instead. This track is also rumored to be aimed at Ariana’s ex-boyfriend Big Sean, who, since her breakup with Grande, was in a long-term relationship with Jhene Aiko. However, this track has seemed to have worked in Grande’s favor, as Big Sean and Jhene Aiko have since split, and Sean and Ariana were recently spotted out together.

“I’m a girl with a whole lot of baggage;” “been through some bad s***, I should be a sad b****, who would’ve thought it’d turn me to a savage,” says Ariana on “ghostin,” and “7 rings” respectively. Along with being arguably the biggest female pop star in the world currently, Ariana has gone through a lot with her broken engagement, the death of Mac Miller, and the terrorist bombing of one of her concerts in 2017, where 22 fans lost their lives. Ariana Grande’s creation of her fifth album was her way of dealing with the stress brought by these traumatizing events, and is a reason why she decided to record as well as release it only six months after her last. On this album, Ariana says “thank u, next” to her troubled past, and looks to move on to better days.