After the big success of ‘Thank U, Next’ and the icy ballad ‘imagine’, where would Ariana Grande go with the next offering, ‘7 Rings’, off her fifth album, “Thank U, Next”? Would she give us a full-on bop a la “Into You” or would she continue her mid-tempo dominance with a single similar to ‘Love Me Harder’?

The answer as Grande describes it as “a friendship anthem” that uses sparse trap beat with the sample of  Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s ‘Favorite Things‘ made popular by Julie Andrews.

The combination comes off natural to Grande as she sing-speaks and ultimately, ends up rapping by the end of the song. Grande’s enunciation has vastly improved but this particular single showcases that with the succinct delivery of the lyrics.  As for the inspiration, Grande owes it to a day of self-care with a few of her girlfriends.

“well …………. ’twas a pretty rough day in nyc. my friends took me to tiffany’s. we had too much champagne. i bought us all rings. it was very insane and funny. & on the way back to the [studio] njomza was like ‘bitch, this gotta be a song lol’. so we wrote it that afternoon,” tweeted Grande about the incident that sparked the birth of
the track.

The track lyrically describes a day of excess and debauchery with her girlfriends with nods to her “bad shit” and “retail therapy my new addiction.” There’s a sense of camaraderie as he sing-speaks through the song with references to buying matching diamonds for six of her bitches. Musically, the song is a step forward from the sugary and sweet tracks from ‘Sweetener’ and could be amplified 1000x better if it included
Nicki Minaj. (Remix stat, please.)

Directed by Hannah Lux Davis, the accompanying music video is girls’ night in with tons of champagne and lots of pink through the girls’ funhouse. Grande appears draped
in diamonds in one of the video’s various scenes. A few easter eggs are scattered throughout the video with a special appearance from one of her pets, a nod to her locks, and a possible clue about a potential song.

‘7 Rings’  shows Grande’s human side by showing that she copes with heartbreak and loss just like us….by grabbing her close friends and diving into excess.