【搬运】【译】滚石杂志Rolling Stone评Ariana Grande专辑《Thank U,Next》

搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

翻译：simon joanne

校对：Joonly EC

推送：Lynn Liu

Ariana Grande is a woman of her word, dropping her new album just six months after her last one—and Thank U, Next turns out to be her best album yet. Sweetener was full of potential hits; the old-school model would have been to milk it for a couple of years, tour it to death, then start the cycle all over again. Instead, Grande went back in the studio while her energy was raging and banged out another album in two weeks. This is her Amnesiac to Sweetener’s Kid A. The theme is basically, “Break up with your music industry, I’m bored.”

Ariana是个说话算话的人——在上一张专辑发行六个月之后她就发行了至今为止她最好的一张专辑——《Thank U, Next（谢谢，下一位）》。《Sweetener（甜味剂）》中有很多可以大火的单曲，一般人完全可以坐着靠这一张专辑吃饭，休息个几年直至把这张专辑的价值吸干净，然后再重复这一过程，循环往复。然而Ariana却在自己的精力依旧充足的情况下立马回到录音室，并在两周内完成了另一张专辑，好像完全忘记了《Sweetener》的存在。这基本上就像Ariana在说：“Break up with your music industry, I'm bored.(和音乐产业老规矩分手说再见吧，老娘已经烦了！)”

Sweetener was an ambitious artist crafting a self-consciously wide-scale pop statement. Thank U, Next is just a woman and a mood, taking that mood out for a drive until she pedal-to-the-metals it right off a cliff. What a glorious pop rush it is—the album version of one of those emergency break-up karaoke sessions with a few therapeutic hours of Mary J. Blige and Toni Braxton songs.

对于Ariana这一位颇具野心的艺人来说，《Sweetener》是一张被精心制作、具有广泛视野和自我意识的流行声明。《Thank U, Next》则只是一个女人和一种情绪，Ariana带着这种情绪开车兜风，踩紧油门，一路狂飙至悬崖。这是一场极其辉煌的流行热潮——这张专辑版呈现的东西让我感觉是一次因分手而紧急召开的KTV聚会、Mary J. Blige和Toni Braxton的治愈性歌曲被唱了几个小时。

“Lately I’ve been on a roller coaster/Trying to get hold of my emotions,” Ariana confesses in “Needy.” By “lately,” she seems to mean since she first tasted oxygen, and by “get hold of my emotions” she means turning her emotions into a spectacular, larger-than-life mess. She’s been through the ringer in the past two years—the Manchester bombing, Mac Miller’s death, a whirlwind engagement that turned into a messy public split. Thank U, Next is her response, reflecting her new determination to move fast and keep it spontaneous. “My dream has always been to be . . . obviously not a rapper, but, like, to put out music in the way that a rapper does,” she told Billboard in December. “It’s just like, ‘Bruh, I just want to fucking talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do.’”

“Lately I’ve been on a roller coaster/Trying to get hold of my emotions（最近，我就像在过山车上一样，尝试着把控住自己的情绪）”Ariana在“Needy”中坦白道。这里的“lately”在Ariana的表达中感觉像是从自己出生那一刻便开始了，而“get hold of my emotions（把控住自己的情绪）”则是在说，她尝试着把自己的情绪转化成一种比生活还要巨大而传奇的混沌。在过去的两年里，Ariana经历了各种痛苦——曼彻斯特爆炸、Mac Miller去世，一场“闪订婚”的佳话变成了一场公关闹剧。这张专辑则是Ariana对所有这一切的回应，反映着她放下过去继续前行和保持自然的生活目标。“我一直梦想着……当然不是去做一名饶舌歌手，而是像一个饶舌歌手那样发行音乐，”她在12月的公告牌榜杂志访谈中说道，“就像这样：‘哥们儿，我他妈的只想和我的粉丝对话，像这些男孩那样创作、发行音乐’。”

When she surprised the world with “Thank U, Next” last fall, no one was expecting more than a quickie celebrity-shade novelty, yet it turned out to be a ballad with astonishing grace and resonance—and the whole album is up to that level. She’s going for the off-the-dome energy of a hip-hop mixtape: no guest stars, no duets. She works with her most trusted collaborators, like Max Martin, Tommy Brown, Victoria Monet, Tayla Parx and Pop Wansel. As she sings in “Ghostin’,” her surprisingly candid ballad about death, grief and recovery, “I’m a girl with a whole lot of baggage.”

去年秋天，当Ariana以一曲《Thank U, Next》震惊了全世界，那时大多数人却只想见证这个稚嫩的明星昙花一现，然而最后不仅是这一首让人惊喜也能激发共鸣的首单，就连专辑中其他的曲目也一同达到了这一高水准。她带有一种嘻哈mixtape冲破穹顶式的精力——没有邀请其他的歌手客串，完全一个人完成了整张专辑的演绎。她和她最信任的制作人一起合作——Max Martin, Tommy Brown, Victoria Monet, Tayla Parx 和 Pop Wansel。在“Ghostin”中，她对于死亡、伤痛和愈合表现得异常坦率，她唱道：“I’m a girl with a whole lot of baggage（我是个肩负了太多东西的女孩）”。

It’s strange to go back and listen to “Dangerous Woman” from just three years ago, back when Ariana sang about needing a dude to make her feel dangerous. Picture that. Well, those days are gone—this Ariana needs danger lessons like she needs an extra ponytail. Like she sings in the excellent “Makeup,” “Let me stay in my bag, ‘cause I like when you mad/It’s a mood, it’s a vibe, it’s a look, it’s a match.”

回到三年前，去重温《Dangerous Woman（危险女人）》这张专辑，试着想象，当时的Ariana还在歌曲中渴望着一个能让自己变得“危险”的男人。但如今，这些都已经过去了——刚入宫的Ariana已经死了，她现在是Ariana·钮祜禄·Grande，她需要一些危险的教程，就像她需要另外一根马尾辫一样。就像她在“Makeup”中唱道：“Let me stay in my bag, ‘cause I like when you mad/It’s a mood, it’s a vibe, it’s a look, it’s a match（让我待在自己的包里，因为我喜欢你生气，这是一种心情，是一种氛围，是一种表情，是一种搭配）。”

“7 Rings” bites The Sound of Music, but it’s much cooler than that time Gwen Stefani did “The Lonely Goatherd”—Ari fuses trap and Maria Von Trapp, from the Alps to the ATL. Yet it’s not really a song about expensive jewelry and bubbly. At heart, it’s a song about treating yourself and your friends like superstars even if nobody else notices. It’s her version of Cher’s “But mom, I am a rich man” speech. “NASA” is her excellent space-oddity ballad about her emotional solar system and the way her orbit changes over time; “Fake Smile” samples the Wendy Rene dusty soul groove “After Laughter,” a hip-hop touchstone via the Wu-Tang Clan.

“7 rings”采样了《音乐之声》原声带歌曲，但这首歌却要比Gwen Stefani的“The Lonely Goatherd”酷得多——从Alps 到ATL ，Ariana完美融合了Trap和Maria Von Trapp。但这并不是真的是一首完全描写纸醉金迷的歌曲，在心底深处，这首歌是在说即使没有人注意到，你还是得把自己和朋友们当成巨星一样对待。这首歌就是Cher奶奶的名句“But mom, I am a rich man（但是妈妈，我自己就是那个有钱人）”的Ariana版本(Cher的妈妈问Cher什么时候退休找个有钱人结婚)。另一首“NASA”则是Ariana版的“Space Oddity”，只不过这里的太阳系代表的是她自己的感情世界，而所有行星的轨道则一直在变化。“Fake Smile”采样了Wendy Rene的“After Laughter”（一首很有年代感的灵魂乐），是一首通过Wu-Tang Clan组合创作的嘻哈试金石。

“Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored” is a perfect song title in the tradition of Britney’s “Get Naked (I Got a Plan),” with Max Martin and a clever interpolation of the ‘NSync deep cut “It Makes Me Ill.” It’s the perfect way to end this album—after crying her tears and screaming her screams and feeling her feels, Ari flirts with the bartender on her way out, ready for more punishment. This is one of the year’s best pop albums so far, even in a 2019 that’s already turning out to be a great one for new music. Thank U, Next makes you suspect that the best Ariana is yet to come.

以Britney的“Get Naked (I Got a Plan)”的套路来看，“Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored”是个完美的歌曲标题，在歌曲中Max Martin还巧妙地插入了一段NSYNC的热单“It Makes Me Ill”旋律。这是为整张专辑画上句点的最好方式——在哭过闹过感受过之后，Ariana开始和寻找出路——和酒保调起情来，已经为日后更多的惩罚做好准备。这是目前这一年里发行过的最好的流行专辑，即使是在2019年，这也将成为新音乐中的佼佼者。《Thank U, Next》甚至会让你怀疑，Ariana是不是还会有更好的音乐作品？