Ariana Grande cleans out the White House with women, colour and gays in "Positions"

On October 14th Ariana Grande casually tweeted out how she can't wait to give her fans her new album this month when there's only two weeks left in the damn month, and the fandom went into fucking meltdown. Then after days of nothing else, Ariana tweeted out her website which featured countdowns to the single "Positions" and the album of the same title.

"Positions" is co-produced by Tommy Brown, who she also worked with for several songs on Thank U, Next, hence the similarities in sound. "Positions" literally sounds like an offcut from Thank U, Next. The song was co-written by Nija Charles, who also co-wrote Ariana's Lady Gaga collab "Rain On Me". If there's one thing I have to hand it to Ariana for, it's putting Black female songwriters on.

When Ariana revealed the title of the song, everybody immediately said 'The song gon' be about fucking'. As though Ariana couldn't put out a song titled "Positions" about chess, democracy, Twister, women in the workplace or playing 150cc on Mario Kart. And whilst the song did indeed turn out to be about a little bit of fucking, the music video went and gave us two of the things I mentioned.

My mind. Fuck Professor X.

Ariana was DRESSING. She was giving me Scandal.

This was an incredibly timely video. It's a shame that there was no message at the end of the video pushing people to vote, or even links in the YouTube description pushing her mammoth fanbase to do as such. But the video itself makes enough of a statement all by itself, and Ariana's been active on her socials about the importance of voting and voting right.

All-in-all it was a nice video, with cool little moments for her fans to pick up on, such as the framed picture of one of her dogs, her mother and her friends and songwriting partners in crime Victoria Monét and Tayla Parx, and the nod to her Italian heritage with her throwing down in the kitchen.

I like the song. Even though I cannot understand a damn thing she's singing on the chorus. It's not this big ass number and it's not trying to do much, which is what I like about it. It seems Ariana has really settled into these very low key, vibey styles of songs, which is miles away from the likes of "Break Free", "Into You" and "Side to Side" - which I'm sure many of her white gay fans miss. "Positions" isn't a song that I'd go out of my way to play, but I wouldn't skip it if I were listening to the album or if it were in a playlist. It's cute and it makes my head bounce.

Ariana Grande's fifth studio album Positions is released on October 30th.

💿 Album reviews: Yours Truly | My Everything | Sweetener