Hold The Moonlight In Your Hands

Ariana Grande “Moonlight”

Ariana Grande’s major hits tend to be uptempo and sorta blaring, or force her into pairing up with pop rappers who seem arbitrarily selected and artificially forced into the song. I much prefer her in ballad mode, particularly when she aims for nostalgia and innocence, as on “Moonlight.” The song is extremely sweet and sentimental, and though she subverts the old-fashioned qualities of the tune with some contemporary slang, it’s pretty clear that she’s whole-heartedly embracing the naive romance of it all. Grande’s voice is lovely on this, and nicely balanced between straight-forward emoting and nuanced elegance. I like that she opens her new album with this song – other artists might sequence this sort of song at the end, but she’s wise enough to know that this is exactly the sort of showcase for her voice that ought to be your entry point into a record.

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