Ariana Grande-7 Rings-Song Review

Andriana Rud, Staff Writer

Here we go, my very first negative song review. Yes, yes, I know that I keep on talking about how I want to get others to listen to music with fresh ears, but realizing that a song isn’t good is a big part of that. So please, just bear with me and be open to my opinions. I’ll just make my opinion clear right off the bat; this song isn’t really good. It’s got a ton of problems and not a lot of positives to make up for it. So please, don’t hate me, but 7 Rings is not a good song. Now, let’s take a journey through the mind of Andriana and analyze why this is probably the worst thing that Ariana Grande has done.

Let’s preface this with-I do not hate Ariana Grande. In fact, I actually quite like her. Even if she had a slow start, I’ve always been happy when a new single of hers comes out. Breathinwas my favorite song of last year and Thank You Next was also pretty good. However, just because she is an amazing singer and songwriter, does NOT MEAN that she can’t make a bad song or two as well. 7 Rings is the first big one and unfortunately it is the worst. But somehow, beyond all reason, this reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100! Thankfully it’s already off the charts, but how did it ever reach the heights that it did? I guess that people like the “female empowerment” that the song claims to promote, but this is totally not how to do it. 

Now let’s finally get to why this song isn’t good. First of all, I’m just gonna be blunt, the music is absolutely terrible. It’s cold,immaculate, and dark, which at first doesn’t seem like a negative, but after an entire year of being pummelled with this kind of stuff, I just don’t care anymore. There are just to many songs like this nowadays and you know what:What happened to pop music? Every music critic and their moms have already talked about it, but don’t you all remember the days when pop was fun and happy? These days popular music feels like it’s trying to drown me in despair and darkness. Todd in the Shadows actually made this observation when he mentioned that one of the biggest hits of 2014 was literally called Happy, and one of the biggest hits in 2018 was literally called Sad.This song just highlights how bad that is getting and I just absolutely hate this new dark and dreary sound that killed pop music.

The lyrics aren’t bad per say, but there has been some pretty serious drama and controversy regarding some ….. word choices made in the lyrics. I won’t go too in-depth because we’re keeping this PG, but essentially, many lyrics had a lot of people raising their eyebrows and accusing Grande of appropriating a culture that has a bad history with their oppression coming from America. The specific lyrics that got people’s feathers ruffled are, “Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble”, “Whoever said money can’t solve your problems? Must have had not enough money to solve ‘em.” and especially– “You like my hair? Gee thanks, just bought it.” At first glance, these don’t seem all that bad, but mainly the way that Grande sings it felt rude and too similar to certain parts of the culture she was accused of appropriating, at least to many people, including me. The song also focuses less on what she did to get all the money she’s talking about, and instead so it just sounds like she’s a spoiled brat bragging about her wealth. 

Now as I mentioned earlier, Todd In The Shadows is also a music critic on Youtube who did his own review of the song and went over a lot of the same points I did. I tried not to copy off of him, but I do strongly encourage you to check him out since he’s an amazing music critic and I could never even begin to be as good as him. I just wanted to clarify that so people know and I really like him, so look him up on youtube and I promise you that not only will you get some great insight on music, but you’ll also have a fun time and laugh a ton. With everything out of the way, I want to say that while I may hate the music, Ariana did include some catchy melodies in the song so I slightly understand why some people might like it. But if you look past those simple melodies, (one of which was technically just a sample from The Sound Of Music’s “Favorite Things”), the song doesn’t have much going for it, and Ariana should have been more careful with what she put and didn’t include in the lyrics of this extremely overrated song.

 

3/10-Pretty Bad