The Unbothered Mathematics of Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande started out as the hyperactive half of Sam & Cat, a Nickelodeon show she shared with the excellent Jennette McCurdy, and became something no one could have entirely predicted: one of the most resilient figures in contemporary pop, a woman who has absorbed genuinely terrible things in quick succession and kept moving in ways that feel less like PR management and more like stubborn, exhausting survival.

The list is heavy. In 2017 a suicide bomber killed twenty-two people at her concert in Manchester. Then Mac Miller, her ex, died of an overdose. Then her engagement to Pete Davidson collapsed publicly in the way that everything involving Saturday Night Live cast members tends to. Any one of these events would justify a very long absence. Grande did the opposite—she worked, she released music, she kept showing up. She’s a descendant of Italian immigrants, raised in Florida, and she’s been famous since she was a teenager. That the machine hasn’t ground her down entirely is worth noting. That she’s still making music worth listening to is worth more.

7 Rings, remixed now with 2 Chainz, is pure bubblegum materialism—confident, deliberately shallow, quietly defiant. I buy myself all of my favorite things. And then, with the deadpan of someone who has genuinely thought it through: whoever said money can’t solve your problems must not have had enough money to solve them. There’s something honest in that position. Not wise, exactly, but honest. Grande’s been through enough that she’s earned the right to spend her way through a Tuesday if that’s what it takes. I’m not arguing with the math.