A Year Out of the Dark

On May 22, 2017, Salman Abedi detonated a bomb packed with metal fragments at the Manchester Arena, at the end of an Ariana Grande concert. Twenty-three people died. Five hundred and twelve were injured. Ariana was 23 years old.

She went quiet for a while after that—which is the only sane response to something like that. A benefit concert for the victims followed, and then mostly silence. My heart is broken, she’d said. I am so, so sorry. I don’t have words. Then she disappeared, and you couldn’t really blame her. That kind of event doesn’t leave. It follows you into every arena, every crowd, every loud noise that sounds like something it isn’t.

Now she’s back. Nearly a year later, she returns with "No Tears Left to Cry"—a new single and the announcement of an album. The song is not what you’d expect from someone trying to process what she went through. It’s buoyant, almost defiant. I love, I live, she sings. I just want you to come with me, I got no tears left to cry. The weight behind those lines is there if you want to find it, but she doesn’t shove it at you. She offers something stranger and more useful: the decision to keep going, dressed up as a dance track.

There’s something almost uncomfortable about how good it is. You expect grief to sound more like grief. But maybe this is what survival actually sounds like when someone is 24 and still has to figure out how to stand on a stage again. Not somber. Not broken. Just: here. Still here.