#lunaloggingoff

I’m just going to preface this by saying everyone’s music taste is different. Music is a form of art and art is subjective. What I find to be good and interesting to me might not be good and interesting to other people and that’s completely fine. There is no hate at all, people will like what they like. The point of art is that there is something for everyone.

Now that’s out of the way, I think the hate/criticsm that “Hate That I Made You Love Me” by Ariana Grande is getting is being disguised as something else. While I have seen comments and videos talking about the ACTUAL song and how the sound just isn’t for them (which is totally fine btw) and their personal music taste, I’ve seen an OVERWHELMING amount of videos and comments from fans that have been around since the “peak” (around DW to TU,N era) about how bored they were of this new sound and how they want “Popstar Queen Ari” back.

We’ve seen the interviews. We’ve seen the videos. We’ve seen the social media posts and we’ve seen her stories. Since the end of the first Wicked movie (maybe even before that) she’s expressed wanting to pursue a more authentic approach to her music instead of trying to keep up with the curated popstar image that doesn’t suit her anymore. A lot of people forget that she was barely 20 when “Yours Truly” came out. Her launch into MASSIVE popstar success came at 22 YEARS OLD! FRONTAL LOBE WASN’T EVEN FULLY DEVELOPED! SHE’S GONNA BE 33 LATER THIS MONTH!

The version of Ariana a lot of people claim they want her to go back to is the “Thank U, Next” sort of image with the long ponytail, fake accent, thigh high heels, and oversized sweatshirts (which she has openly expressed was a time of covering herself and being DEEPLY insecure) and she was 25. No way in hell would she be the same person at 33 as she was at 25. That’s an 8 year gap. No one would be the exact same person after 8 years and if they were, you would call them immature, stubborn, childish, and ignorant. The entire WORLD as we knew it from 8 years ago has COMPLETELY shifted. Nothing is the same anymore. But because it’s a big time celebrity, suddenly it’s “we want the old you back.” It’s hypocritical.

The beauty of art in any form is watching it evolve and watching new things come to life. Whether that’s creating new genres or a new image, humans were designed to evolve and so should the art we create. People complain all the time on the internet about how everything is so fake and curated. “Nothing is authentic anymore” but the second Ariana Grande says the “pop princess diva aesthetic” no longer fits her as an artist, y’all want her to keep it up and therefore make it fake. The entire essence of that time in her MUSIC CAREER (very big difference between career and actual life) was the fact that it FELT AUTHENTIC TO HER at the time. The music fit the vibe she was going for. The outfits and the performances felt right because that’s what fit her personality at the time. For her to go back to that huge ponytail, thigh high heels, and sweatshirts now, it would look like a costume because the person BEHIND all of that has completely changed internally which we hear sing about in her music from Eternal Sunshine Deluxe and in her new single, HTIMYLM.

Those fans are taking this new sound and the lyrics from HTIMYLM and using it as a shield of “this doesn’t sound good” to hide the fact that the real reason they don’t like it is because the lyrics are a direct callout to THOSE KINDS OF FANS. “You studied my crown and borrowed my body” people have been dissecting her online for YEARS, bullying and harassing the absolute hell out of her so much to the point that she completely deleted her Twitter account and still has yet to come back to the app. “I guess it’s kind of cute how you like me where you are” and where “we” are is stuck in 2019, still fawning over a version of Ariana that was mentally and emotionally struggling in her private life. “Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts of your own accord?” No explanation needed. THE ENTIRE CHORUS OF THE SONG. It’s a callout, it’s the truth, and it’s coming from the only person who can break a million parasocial relationships in three minutes and nineteen seconds.

People hated on the “Sweetener” album because it was too experimental and different. People hated on Positions because “the songs weren’t hitting.” Guess what they both have in common. Despite being hated after the release of the FULL album (with the exception of the singles) BOTH albums have received an ASTRONOMICAL amount of love years later from people that absolutely dogged on them when they came out on release day. Saying things like “hidden gem” and “how did anyone possibly hate this album?!” I guarantee the same thing is gonna happen again with “petal.” Mind you, we’ve only heard ONE song. ONE. HTIMYLM is just the lead single. There are still plenty of songs we aren’t going to hear until July 31 that are probably going to receive MASSIVE love from casual listeners and Arianators alike.

I would also like to point out that this entire post could also be used as an example to a broader problem in our society where we tell people to “be themselves” but when we DO act and show up as our true selves without watering down our personalities to appease the majority, we immediately shut them down and tell them to go back to most palatable version of themselves so we don’t feel uncomfortable. We act as if people don’t change over time as we gain new perspectives on life through experiences, events, and relationships. Why would it be any different for a celebrity?