搬運自：微信公眾號【評論搬一堆】（在原文基礎(chǔ)上添加了英語原文與排版調(diào)整）

翻譯：Ryan-Chopin

校正：Iris六百零七

她和法瑞爾的合作極具突破性，使得這張專輯的其余部分過于墨守成規(guī)，甚至黯然失色。

Growing up in public is never straightforward. The route from kids’ TV-approved poppet to Serious Artist is traditionally fraught with issues. But arguably no pop star has ever had a tougher route than?Ariana Grande. If it seems crass to suggest that the public and music industry’s perception of her was altered by?the events of 22 May 2017?and their aftermath, well, at least one insider already went there. “In all honest[y], I feel like [after the Manchester bombing] was when different people from the record company actually started to understand what we were trying to do,” said?Pharrell Williams, the producer Grande drafted in to give her fourth album some artistic edge, earlier this year. “It’s unfortunate that that situation is what gave it context, but they were able to really see it then. And that’s the truth.”

?在公眾視野下長大從來不是件容易的事。她一路從兒童電視偶像成長到專業(yè)藝人，路途并非一帆風(fēng)順。但可以說，沒有哪位流行歌手的路途比愛莉安娜·格蘭德(Ariana Grande)的更加坎坷。單憑2017年5月22日那天發(fā)生的事件就改變公眾和音樂界對她的看法，這似乎有些夸張，但有一個人正是那樣的?！罢f實話，我覺得在那時(曼徹斯特爆炸案)起，唱片公司里的各路人才開始清楚認識到我們的所作所為，”法瑞爾·威廉姆斯(Pharrell Williams)這樣說道。今年早些時候，格蘭德邀請法瑞爾參與了她第四張專輯的制作?！安恍业氖?，此張專輯背景源于那場事故，那些場景仿佛蘊藏在其中，真實存在。”

?Certainly, the magazine profiles of the singer that have appeared since the terrorist attack have struck a new note of seriousness. One spent time exploring her mother’s love of 19th-century literature and her aunt’s friendship with Gloria Steinem and informed readers that Grande is not a nihilist – a useful clarification for anyone who felt Heidegger’s post-Nietzschean thinking underpinned the contents of her 2015 EP Christmas & Chill. Another opened with a 400-word disquisition on the semantic importance of the height at which Grande wears her ever-present ponytail. Whatever you make of that kind of thing, it suggests that now may be an apposite moment for Grande to try out a more experimental kind of pop than the charming but unchallenging brand of EDM and R&B-infused fizz with which she made her name.

自從恐怖襲擊發(fā)生后，雜志上便出現(xiàn)了這位歌手的一些簡介，這也引起了人們的關(guān)注。她曾花大量時間探索了母親對19世紀文學(xué)的熱愛，以及她姨媽與格洛麗亞·斯泰納姆(Gloria?Steinem)之間的友誼，這倒提醒了讀者，格蘭德不是虛無主義者——對于那些認為是海德格爾的后尼采式思維成就了她2015年發(fā)行《Christmas & Chill》的人來說，這次澄清十分重要。還有一篇文章以一段400字的論述開篇，講述了“格蘭德始終扎著馬尾辮”在語義上的重要性。無論你如何看待這類文章，事實表明，現(xiàn)在的時機或許更適合格蘭德嘗試這種更具有實驗性的流行音樂，而不是EDM和R&B風(fēng)格的泡沫音樂--悅耳但無挑戰(zhàn)性。

And that’s just what Sweetener offers, at least in part. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Pharrell Williams’s back catalogue knows that, as a producer, he is extraordinarily talented and rather mercurial, as capable of making formulaic music as he is of the kind of sonic risk-taking that powered Kelis’s Milkshake or Snoop Dogg’s Drop It Like It’s Hot. But something about this particular collaboration seems to have fired up his imagination. The half of Sweetener with his fingerprints on it represents a genuinely bold and exciting move on Grande’s part. It’s filled with tunes richer and more serpentine than your average millennial pop topline.

? 而這正是《甜味劑》所存在的瑕疵，至少有一部分如此。任何一個對法瑞爾·威廉姆斯(Pharrell Williams)制作的音樂略有所知的人都知道，作為一名制作人，他才華出眾，既敢于嘗試，也能創(chuàng)作出公式化的音樂，正如他為凱利斯(Kelis)制作的 “Milkshake”或為Snoop Dogg制作的“Drop It Like It's Hot”的音樂那樣充滿冒險。但這次合作似乎激發(fā)了他的想象力，他操刀的一大半專輯作品都為格蘭德的演唱增添了大膽而激動人心的一筆。這張專輯帶來了更豐富、更多變的曲調(diào)，已超過新千年流行音樂的平均水準。

On Borderline, Grande’s voice floats airily over a sinister, jarring chord sequence, not unlike the kind of thing that might have provided the hook in a dark old rave track. Even a song as ostensibly frothy as Successful shifts and twists unexpectedly in a way that suggests someone behind it is conversant with the work of 70s soul’s more expansive melodists. The lyrics, meanwhile, stick fast to Grande’s aim of providing light relief – “it feels good to be so young and hot” – rather than dwelling on the horror of what happened in Manchester. The latter topic seems to be addressed only glancingly and tangentially over the course of Sweetener, in the title of No Tears Left to Cry, the refrain of The Light Is Coming (“… to give back everything the darkness stole”) and in Breathin’s depiction of the singer in the grip of a panic attack.

? 在“Borderline”中，格蘭德的聲音輕快地飄過的同時卻搭著陰險刺耳的和弦，那可能會讓人在一首暗黑的舊狂想曲中被勾起心弦。甚至一首看似成功轉(zhuǎn)型卻不乏膚淺的泡沫歌曲，在某種程度上也暗含了有些幕后制作人廣識70年代靈魂樂作曲家的作品。另外，歌詞體現(xiàn)了格蘭德的一種積極信仰——“充滿活力又年輕的感覺真好”，她沒有無限沉浸在曼徹斯特恐怖襲擊的悲傷中。專輯后一半的主題似乎只是被“一筆帶過”,似乎有脫離《甜味劑》的感覺，例如主打歌曲“No Tears Left To Cry”,“The Light Is Coming”的副歌部分（“...to give back everything the darkness stole”），還有“Breathin”似乎展現(xiàn)了歌手陷入恐慌癥的情景。

The album is packed with songs that blithely dispense with standard verse-chorus structures, that fling disparate musical influences together and seem to go out of their way to avoid cliche: the title track offers a bizarre, gripping splice of earthy Carole King-ish singer-songwriter piano ballad with Migos-inspired hip-hop, complete with onomatopoeic vocal interjections. In a world where a vast tranche of mainstream pop seems to be made using a checklist of sounds and effects, there is something very striking about the blue-sky thinking behind The Light Is Coming: a distorted snatch of dialogue from a news report about an angry rightwing crowd in rural Pennsylvania protesting against Obamacare runs throughout; the rhythm track jitters and glitches, overlaid with whistling, ping-ponging 80s video game electronics; the chorus is a playground chant, albeit with apocalyptic overtones.

??這張專輯的歌曲,都拋開主歌到副歌的一般標(biāo)準結(jié)構(gòu),將不同的音樂風(fēng)格混雜，似乎在故意避免陳詞濫調(diào)。其主打歌曲夾雜了劣質(zhì)版卡羅爾·金的鋼琴抒情風(fēng)與Migos的嘻哈風(fēng),也不乏格蘭德突然融入的炫技型歌喉。在這個世界上,絕大部分主流流行音樂愛用各種音效加持,而在“The Light Is Coming”中我們能看到一個不成熟的想法:歌曲背景出現(xiàn)了一個扭曲的人聲，這是從一篇關(guān)于一名右翼人士在賓夕法尼亞州鄉(xiāng)村集會中抗議奧巴馬醫(yī)改的新聞報道中截取的;其節(jié)奏軌不穩(wěn)且存在毛疵，還拌著80年代電子游戲設(shè)備的砰砰雜聲;盡管帶有世界末日的弦外之音，但其副歌部分也有于操場演繹圣歌般的韻味。

The only problem is that these collaborations throw the rest of Sweetener into an unforgiving light. The gulf in invention between, say, Get Well Soon – a brave lyrical exploration of Grande’s mental health set to spiralling analogue synthesisers and lush multi-tracked vocal harmonies – and the saccharine ballad Better Off is pretty gaping. Clearly no one gave Swedish superproducer Max Martin the memo about avoiding cliches: his tracks deal exclusively in boilerplate stuff of varying degrees of quality. Driven by a skipping UK garage-inspired beat, No Tears Left to Cry is a high-quality example of the songwriter-for-hire’s art; on the other hand, Everytime is entirely formulaic and the most arresting thing about God Is a Woman is its title.

? 美中不足的是，這些合作將《甜味劑》其余部分都扔進了無情的聚光燈下。其歌曲存在極大分歧，在“Get Well Soon”中我們可以發(fā)現(xiàn)，這些大膽的歌詞中蘊含著格蘭德的精神情感，是模擬合成器和豐富的多音軌和聲的組合運用，而在“Better Off”中，其極其甜美的抒情曲風(fēng)又存在明顯的裂縫與漏洞。顯然，沒有人給這位瑞典超級制作人馬克斯·馬丁(Max Martin)一份關(guān)于避免陳詞濫調(diào)的通知:他的曲目制作完全是千篇一律，且質(zhì)量參差不齊。但在英國車庫舞曲風(fēng)格的跳躍型節(jié)奏推動下，“No Tears Left to Cry”是一首流動型制作人制作的高質(zhì)量歌曲的典范;另一方面，每一次他的制作都是完全公式化的，而“God Is a Woman”最矚目的便是它的歌名了（上帝是個女人）。

It makes for an uneven album that attempts to balance the desire to – as Grande put it – “make the weirdest thing we can” with something infinitely more straightforward. It sounds like the work of an artist torn between doing exactly what she pleases and, perhaps understandably under the circumstances, giving her audience what they want. But there’s no doubt which of these impulses is more successful artistically. It’s hard not to hope she throws caution completely to the wind next time: the world could use more pop music as imaginative as Sweetener’s highlights.

? 其試圖在“做我們能做的最新奇的事情”和“更直接的事情”之間找到平衡，但這使得這張專輯的音樂變得參差不齊。這張專輯聽起來像是一位分裂藝術(shù)家的作品，此情此境下我們或許可以理解，她既想遵從內(nèi)心，又想呈現(xiàn)出大眾所愛。但毋庸置疑的是這些沖動中總有一些取得了藝術(shù)成功。我們肯定希望她下次能完全放飛自我，因為世界可以擁有更多元的流行音樂，而《甜味劑》的存在正是富有音樂想象力的代表。