“Maybe one day I’ll get away with something naughty,” a 21-year-old former Nickelodeon actor told the New York Times in a 2014 profile. But what, to Ariana Grande, did forgivable naughtiness entail? She may have risen to the public eye thanks to a role on children’s television – in her case, as a supporting player on Nick’s tween sitcom Victorious – but don’t be fooled: She’s no Miley Cyrus. She’s no Britney Spears. She’s a good girl, and she’ll blow your mind.
Grande drove that point home with her 2013 debut album Yours Truly, a mix of retro doo-wop and neutered ‘90s R&B where her most explicit proclamation of sexual attraction was: “You get my heart jumpin’ when you put your lips on mine,” because, like, what more is there to do with a bad boy? But a mere 51 weeks after Yours Truly, Grande re-emerged with her sophomore album My Everything, released 10 years ago today. If Yours Truly marked her bridging the gap between her careers as key Nickelodeon player and pop mainstay, My Everything signaled a hard arrival into the latter. She’s grown up now. She’s ready to “picture me and you making sweet love” instead.
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“Problem” is by no metric a perfect song, but it was a perfect lead single for the transition period into My Everything. The second track on the record, it begins with a nasal saxophone solo – a hallmark of what I like to call the “Thrift Shop” Effect – before Max Martin and Shellback’s beat comes in, crossing over in real time from her earlier Motown-inspired instrumentals into a sleek, distinctly mid-2010s aura. (A particularly good call – Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” would come out a few weeks later, killing the resurgence of the Brill Building sound about as quickly as it arrived.)
In fact, “Problem” had the perfect storm of bells and whistles to become a #2 hit: Fluttery verses that flaunt Grande’s pipes, a beat drop inoffensive enough for mainstream radio, and a guest verse from Australia’s then-finest export, rapper Iggy Azalea, coinciding with the release of her own debut studio album. Top it all off with a refrain that’ll immediately drill the song’s title into your memory – “I got one less problem without ya” – and you’ve got a bona-fide pop star on your hands, baby.
Four singles preceded My Everything, and incidentally, they were the four songs on the album that credit Max Martin as a producer. After “Problem” came a real left turn, “Break Free,” a rave-tailored tune featuring Zedd that fit squarely into the era’s EDM-pop obsession. It has insistent synths, a vaguely empowering message, a hook worthy of a GLEE cover, and a 20-second instrumental outro, in case you wanted to spin it at the club or whatever. Like “Problem,” “Break Free” blew up (though not quite as high, charts-speaking), and the shackles of her Nickelodeon past were one step closer to permanent eradication.
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There are quite a few aesthetic indicators that we associate with Ariana Grande now: Eyebrow-tugging ponytails, bunny masks, fairylike dresses, lots and lots of impossibly tiny tattoos. Ariana Grande, to the culture, is no longer just a person in 2024; she’s almost an off-screen character. She’s a Halloween costume. She has a TikTok döppelganger who – after Grande lightened her hair to portray Glinda The Good Witch in this year’s Wicked film adaptation – changed her hair to the same shade of blonde. We know Ariana Grande when we hear and see her. But on My Everything, Grande was still crafting her pop princess persona beyond just being the pint-sized white girl who whistles like Mariah Carey.
And so we see Grande try to wear a few too hats too many: The Harry Styles-penned “Just A Little Bit Of Your Heart,” a piano ballad that reeks of an Adele B-side, is a whiplash-inducing change of pace sandwiched between the shimmering Weeknd duet “Love Me Harder” and the twerkable trap crossover “Hands On Me,” where she winks “might be a little thing, but I like that long” between A$AP Ferg verses. She’d become gay men’s new favorite straight girl with “Break Your Heart Right Back,” another pop-rap ditty in which she seeks revenge on an ex-boyfriend who ditched her for a guy, in case you forgot she’s a theater kid. “Don’t understand how to spell it out for ya,” guest Childish Gambino wonders over a Diana Ross interpolation. “Yes, I’m a G from the A and they ask Y.” Well, that’s a way to do it!
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My Everything was praised upon its release for proving Grande’s level-up into 2014, as opposed to trapping her in that vintage sound of Yours Truly that felt more outdated than endearing. But a decade removed, it’s hard not to feel that My Everything was so current at the time of its release that its shelf-life was guaranteed to wear out fast. But, to give the album its flowers, it was also a useful blueprint for the future of Ariana Grande – the person, the character, the imitable but never replicable pop diva. Her following album, 2016’s Dangerous Woman, honed in on what made My Everything promising; the hip-hop crossovers felt purposeful instead of contrived, the dance synths tasteful instead of trendy. My Everything was just right for its time, a thesis statement that seemed to argue: Maybe she can do it all. Maybe she’ll even be a little bit naughty.
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