my everything

the pivot

yours truly was a doo-wop and r&b record. this one is not: it is edm-adjacent pop with max martin and ilya salmanzadeh on the singles and features on nearly half of it. the change of direction inside twelve months is abrupt and it is the single most commercially consequential decision of her early career.

it worked immediately. problem, with a saxophone hook and iggy azalea, broke digital sales records on release and stalled at number two. break free with zedd went to four. bang bang, technically a jessie j record, went to three. love me harder with the weeknd went to seven. four top tens from one album year is a rate almost nobody sustains.

the features

two of those relationships outlasted the record by a decade. she has since made six songs with nicki minaj and four with the weeknd, both of which start here.

what is actually good on it

• love me harder. the best song on the record and now one of her fifteen most streamed, well above its 2014 chart position.
• one last time. the fifth single, a modest hit at the time, and one of the largest songs in her catalogue today for reasons that had nothing to do with 2014 — see the manchester piece.
• break free. the zedd one, and the first record where she is clearly having a good time rather than demonstrating competence.
• just a little bit of your heart. written for her by harry styles, and the quietest thing on an extremely loud album.

what it settled

the nickelodeon question, mostly. an artist with one number one album can still be dismissed as a television spin-off; an artist with four top-ten singles in a year and a grammy nomination cannot. santa tell me arrived three months later and quietly became the most durable asset of the entire period.

what it did not settle was the persona. that took dangerous woman two years later, and the album that was going to sit between them was announced, retitled and rebuilt.