As the Mean Girls musical lands in cinemas, Ariana Grande’s gossip-defying comeback single reminds me a little of a classic line in the original. It’s the school Christmas talent show and lovable misfit Damian is singing a rendition of Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful, right down to including the first beat from the music video: “Don’t look at me!” he admonishes the crowd – then brings the house down. That possibly contradictory push-and-pull of hating attention but also craving it drives the housey Yes, And? as Grande rebukes the prurient interest in her personal life but sort of Streisand-effects it at the same time. “Don’t comment on my body / Do not reply / Your business is yours and mine is mine / Why do you care so much whose dick I ride?” she sings. If you didn’t know there had been online speculation about her health, her divorce and a new relationship that may have involved some infidelity from one party, you certainly do now.
These things may come as news to the general public, since Yes, And? follows an unusually quiet few years for the 30-year-old pop star in the wake of an intensely prolific period. In 2017, her concert at Manchester Arena was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing 22 people and injuring 59. A year later, she released No Tears Left to Cry, a defiant celebration of life and pleasure, and the album Sweetener. A month after its release, her beloved former boyfriend, the rapper Mac Miller, died of an overdose, and Grande soon broke off her engagement with the comedian Pete Davidson. Music evidently became a form of processing: she released two more albums in quick succession, 2019’s self-scouring but breezy Thank U, Next, and 2020’s randier Positions. But since then, her only releases have been a few verses on remixes of other people’s songs. Outside music, she’s launched the inevitable celebrity makeup brand and has been filming an adaptation of Wicked. During her off period, she also married and divorced real estate agent Dalton Gomez and is now with her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater. Grande’s personal life apparently triggered sufficient backlash for the singer to address it on Instagram at the end of 2023, writing: “I have never felt more pride or joy or love while simultaneously feeling so deeply misunderstood by people who don’t know me, who piece whispers together and make what they want out of me and their assumptions of my life.”
Yes, And? welds Grande’s displeasure at speculation about her private life to an empowerment anthem that encourages anyone experiencing challenges to own their shit and shake off the criticism. It’s a precarious take on that pop staple, the haters, that tries to draw parallels between the pitfalls of celebrity life and people’s regular everyday dramas. But Grande – co-producing alongside the currently lesser-spotted Max Martin and his associate Ilya – makes it irresistibly effervescent and nimble, her knowing echo of Madonna’s Vogue as delicious as an illicit doughnut lick, as well as a sign, post-Renaissance, that mainstream pop is embracing house in its purest form. (And – following Thank U, Next – Yes, And? makes clear that Grande is a laureate of the very-pregnant comma.) There’s something juicy about Grande tacitly admitting to the limitations of joyful defiance and just embracing straight-up do-one defiance: it is anti-Notes-app-apology pop that cocks a snook at the pious and the concern trolls, delivered in an untouchable vocal register that vaults her above the melee. Maybe Yes, And? solves why Grande’s famous ponytail is so big: it’s full of secrets.
