| |
Discussion: 'Yours Truly' | Reviews Thread
Member Since: 4/28/2011
Posts: 26,425
|
'Yours Truly' | Reviews Thread
Digital Spy -
Quote:
It's been well over a decade since we switched Nickelodeon on after a hard day at school, so when we noticed Ariana Grande vault up the US iTunes chart with 'The Way' earlier this year, our intrigue to find out who she is got the better of us.
The track turned out to be a slick serving of '90s-inspired R&B that showcased the starlet's impressive vocal range and has had us hooked ever since. Comparisons to Mariah Carey were instantaneous, but if that's the reaction you're getting on your debut single proper, it's surely no bad thing at all.
The likeness is hard to ignore throughout Yours Truly, which serves as Grande's attempt to transcend her tweeny image. Follow-up single 'Baby I' is an infectiously bouncy jam of love-struck jitters, while Big Sean collaboration 'Right There' is a smooth throwback R&B number with its stabbing synths and head-nodding beats. The production feels fresh, the lyrics are relatable and the melodies are as cool and sweet as a dollop of raspberry ripple.
The tone and pace of the album rarely changes, but the songs feel accomplished, polished and vibrant. This doesn't ring truer than on 'Piano' with its ear-grabbing hooks and rosy cadence, while The Wanted's Nathan Sykes is a surprisingly fitting duet partner on heart-fluttering ballad 'Almost Is Never Enough'. Obviously Ariana has a long way to go to get to the whistle-note peaks of Mariah's career, but as far as pop introductions go, Yours Truly is little less than a triumph.
|
Rating - 4 Stars {x}
Entertainment Weekly -
Quote:
Innocence in pop exists to be tweaked, twisted, or — thank you, Miley Cyrus — twerked. Katy Perry treats it like a neato vintage find. Lady Gaga channels it into a wide-eyed fascination with everything meta. Ariana Grande — whose kicky debut, Yours Truly, is essentially a love letter to the concept of ''going steady'' — feels, by comparison, immaculately conceived. (If you know about it, it's probably because it already delivered a top 10 hit, ''The Way,'' seemingly out of nowhere.)
Grande, a Nickelodeon star whose latest show, Sam & Cat, debuted in June, can't make an art project out of her innocence just yet. Or press the blinking red SEX button, either: She's 20, but looks younger. (Album artwork that showed her wearing lingerie on a bed of roses was deep-sixed after she teased it online.) So what's left? One of the most purely enjoyable albums of the year, powered by her lithe, Broadway-honed voice and a canny exploitation of her most ''adult'' indulgence: nostalgia. Yours honors '90s-style R&B as surely as it does '50s-style dating. Grande's not only a ringer for Mariah Carey in octave-stacking mode, she's also got boppy tracks (''Baby I,'' ''Right There,'' ''Lovin' It'') to rival early-Mimi classics (think ''Someday'').
Grande and her producers freshen the sound with a little doo-wop, an EDM twist in ''Better Left Unsaid,'' and with-it rappers Mac Miller and Big Sean. The latter slyly acknowledges Grande's chaste image in ''Right There,'' crediting the ''missionary'' position for his player status. Ariana's innocence isn't sacred, of course, but the fact that she wears it as lightly as she does may be a small miracle.
|
Rating - A- {x}
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/17/2013
Posts: 5,729
|
Yas get that critical acclaim girl 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/11/2012
Posts: 702
|
Ari getting them positive reviews 
Yours Truly is such a solid debut album, I wish ha well
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/28/2011
Posts: 26,425
|
If anyone else see's any more reviews, be sure to post in here por favor
#datCRITICALacclaim
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 12,120
|
Only the second coming of...
Get that positive reviews
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/28/2011
Posts: 26,425
|
That's slightly untrue since her predecessor NEVER achieved critical acclaim at any point in her career.
#ArianaTHATpower
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/10/2011
Posts: 3,484
|
I need a metacritic score though
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/22/2010
Posts: 12,270
|
Mariah never really did the "90s R&B" sound, so it's weird to hear reviewers mention that in their comparasions 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 32,106
|
I'm so turned on by this album's perfection
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 2,557
|
I don't know if reviews from smaller newspapers count but The Michigan Daily reviewed the album and gave it a lukewarm rating:
Quote:
Initially glancing at the cover for Ariana Grande’s newest record release, Yours Truly, the gray-scaled star (doused in spotlight) can come off as a bit too diva-esque for a debut album — but she sure does have the pop-chops to back it up. Don’t be fooled by Grande’s juvenile biography, the 20-year-old Nickelodeon actress has vocals directly comparable to the high-ranged powerhouse that is Mariah Carey herself.
Grande entered into the Top 10 with her multi-platinum lead single “The Way,” simultaneously swooping up a broader demographic of listeners. Previously, the former “Victorious” actress released immature disasters like “Put Your Hearts Up,” along with a variety of poorly chosen covers such as Demi Lovato’s “You’re My Only Shorty.” The new R&B aim for Grande’s career spawns a serious tonality in her work, thus canning the teenybopper image that was so heavily embedded into her music.
“The Way” became representative of the overall direction of Yours Truly — an R&B-style record almost entirely written and produced by Harmony Samuels and Babyface. Babyface, the ten-time Grammy Winner singer-songwriter, is notable for being a hit-maker for Mariah Carey. Therefore, it’s only rational that Grande and Republic Records would recruit a songwriting legend for such a comparable voice. Points awarded for rationality, points lost for unoriginality.
Unoriginality is further spotted in “Daydreamin,’ ” one of the first tracks recorded for the album. The song is melodically indistinguishable from Grease’s “Beauty School Dropout,” specifically when tapping the piano keys in the track’s introduction. This song title was initially the title of the record, but the Yours Truly title appeared after controversy in name-similarity to Mariah Carey’s album Daydream.
Most tracks are of quality composition, lyrically and melodically, but beat usage becomes excessive at times. The record’s second promotional single, “Baby I,” exploits nearly every beat in existence, resulting in messiness. Putting soul snaps on the majority of tracks also becomes increasingly monotonous. Despite this production flaw, the album practices a worthy bassline and vocal mix, using many pleasant harmonies.
The collaborations provide considerable assistance in Grande’s strive to be taken seriously on this debut. Mac Miller and Big Sean may lean toward the obnoxious side of rapping, but following a trend certainly helps when trying to sit at the same table as industry dominators. “Popular Song,” however, will do MIKA more favors in the long run as he attempts to break into the American music demographic.
Truthfully, it’s difficult not to label Grande as a Mariah-Carey ripoff, but consider this: Where is Mariah Carey now? The fact that an artist with that much legendary prowess can’t even scrape a Top-10 hit or sell a decent number of records is frankly embarrassing. It’s no wonder her new record is called The Art of Letting Go. Carey needs to let go of her career and let someone else take the reigns. And Grande may very well be just the singer for that.
|
Grade: B link
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 12/3/2010
Posts: 19,759
|
Lol that review is ridiculous.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 1,994
|
Peep that Gaga shout-out 
With Ari I use
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/28/2011
Posts: 26,425
|
@Person
Thanks. I'm not sure if their review will be weighted along with Metacritic but positive review nonetheless.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 1,994
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Person
I don't know if reviews from smaller newspapers count but The Michigan Daily reviewed the album and gave it a lukewarm rating:
Grade: B link |
we talkin' bout smaller newspapers and you come out with the Michigan Daily?
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 2,557
|
Quote:
Originally posted by ARTPOPULAR
|
I'm from New York, everyone else is small to me 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/31/2013
Posts: 53
|
New York Times Review. No score tho...
Quote:
ARIANA GRANDE
“Yours Truly”
(Republic)
“Glee” will begin its fifth season this month, and “American Idol” is busy trying to secure its lineup of judges for the coming 13th season. Together, even though they’re perennially unfashionable, these Fox shows have been responsible for an intense surge of interest in music on television, but they haven’t left much of a mark on the shape of pop.
That’s because both shows are fundamentally conservative institutions, privileging the familiar and the unchallenging. They’re about emulating, not innovating.
Largely by sticking to those codes, Ariana Grande has become the first identifiable post-“Glee”/”Idol” pop star, in that she takes the rules of those enterprises, uses them as a foundation, and innovates atop them. She relates to pop music in the ways those shows do — treating it as a historical inspiration pool and also a sacred text.
But Ms. Grande isn’t a mere covers artist. A onetime child actress — she played Cat Valentine on the Nickelodeon’s “Victorious” and now on the spinoff “Sam & Cat” — she uses the “Glee”/”Idol” template as a jumping-off point to make modern pop-R&B with a sturdy vintage backbone.
For Ms. Grande, the early-mid 1990s are the holy grail. So much of this surprisingly strong album is in debt to Mariah Carey’s first two albums, and several songs were written and produced in part by Babyface, that titan of slow-burn late-1980s R&B. A few songs are riddled with blatant Mariah-isms: See especially the final 20 seconds of “Baby I,” in which Ms. Grande approximates the super-high-pitched vocal trills Ms. Carey excelled at.
Ms. Grande is almost there. She has a lithe voice and is capable of real power, though she doles it out carefully. Like that other child TV star turned pop comer Miley Cyrus, Ms. Grande is 20, but her slide into maturity isn’t moving at Ms. Cyrus’s warp speed. Ms. Grande’s version of adulthood is about expertise, not transgression.
She’s not so innocent that the guest rappers on this album keep their libidos in check, though. “You a princess to the public but a freak when it’s time,” Mac Miller exclaims on “The Way”; “A player so you know I had some girls missionary/My black book of numbers thicker than a dictionary,” Big Sean swears on “Right There.”
They’re expressing thoughts that Ms. Grande can’t quite, both because of the squeakiness of her clean and because of the austerity of her sound. “Yours Truly” is largely sweatless. “I wanna say we’re going steady/Like it’s 1954,” she sings on “Tattooed Heart,” which captures the tenor of this album well. Just as the song structures are traditional, so is the sound.
A couple of songs wink to mid-’90s hip-hop: “Right There” uses the same sample as Lil’ Kim’s 1996 hit “Crush on You,” and “The Way” uses the same sample as Big Punisher’s 1998 “Still Not a Player.” But Ms. Grande’s real innovation is to restore the attitude and power to more traditional pop schemas. “Daydreamin’ ” is clean-cut 1950s-style piano pop, and the striking “Tattooed Heart” has a doo-wop heartbeat. One of the album’s high points is “Almost Is Never Enough,” a bracing torch song on which Ms. Grande sneaks in some gospel-singing enunciation for extra effect. It’s practically Streisandian, startling in its utter rejection of the now, and ripe for some young singer on “Glee” or “Idol” to butcher. JON CARAMANICA
|
LINK
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 1,994
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Person
I'm from New York, everyone else is small to me |
the shade of it all 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 1,994
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Absynthe
New York Times Review. No score tho...
|
See now this I can get with. 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/28/2011
Posts: 26,425
|
New York Times
One of the album’s high points is “Almost Is Never Enough,” a bracing torch song on which Ms. Grande sneaks in some gospel-singing enunciation for extra effect. It’s practically Streisandian, startling in its utter rejection of the now, and ripe for some young singer on “Glee” or “Idol” to butcher.
OMG
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/11/2012
Posts: 268
|
That Michigan Daily review was horrible. I got almost nothing out of the review about the album's content and just got a much unnecessary criticism of Mariah Carey and comparisons of both artists.
|
|
|
|
|
|
