Ariana Grande feat. Zedd – Break Free

“What a final chorus: that’s everything a pop song should be”

Tom: I reckon the credits on this should be the other way round.

Tim: I agree.

Tom: Not to talk down Ariana Grande, of course, although I still think she should have changed her name to Ariana Venti when she turned 20.

Tim: A missed trick if ever there was one.

Tom: She has a heck of a voice. Not many people can pull off casually dropping a whistle register into their singing. But this could be any vocalist: the power of this track comes overwhelmingly from Zedd’s backing.

Tim: It really does (and that’s a lot of power in there), but I guess it’s just a question of who composed the tune really, and who they felt took priority. I’m with you, though.

Tom: And what a final chorus: that’s everything a pop song should be, with some pleasingly 90s and 00s tones in there.

I find the bit after that final chorus very odd, though. There should never be anything after a final chorus. And yet, it just turns into Generic Beats — and given the video, that’s in at least two senses of the word — for a few seconds. Bizarre.

Tim: Hmm. I assumed that was just the bit that’s stuck on the end to mix out with, which yes, I suppose is weird in the video. Nice video, though, even it wasn’t quite enough to make me soil myself.

Tom: I skipped over that text intro, which means this really confused me until I worked it out. I thought you regularly soiled yourself at music videos.

Tim: No. No, no.