Image caption The singer released No Tears Left To Cry worldwide at 0500 GMT
Ariana Grande has returned with her first new music since the terrorist bombing that killed 22 people outside her Manchester Arena show in May 2017.
No Tears Left To Cry alludes to the attack, while channelling the resilience and optimism of her One Love benefit concert, held just two weeks after the atrocity.
"Ain't got no tears left to cry," she sings in the single's soaring chorus.
"So I'm loving, I'm living, I'm picking it up."
Produced by Max Martin, the song transforms from its sombre, gospel-inspired introduction into a summery pop banger - pairing Grande's emotional vocals with a light-footed dance beat.
Lyrically, Grande resolves to overcome fear and hatred "even when it's raining down".
"We're way too fly to partake in all this hate," she sings. "We out here vibin'."
At the end of the music video, a worker bee - the symbol of Manchester - flies towards the camera, in homage to the city.
The 24-year-old has been teasing the song on social media since Tuesday, when she tweeted a teardrop emoji followed by a message telling fans, "missed you."
Subsequent messages contained the title in an upside-down, back-to-front font; and the single's artwork - a greyed-out photograph of Grande, with a rainbow smudged across her eyes.
'She felt everything'
Speaking earlier this year, Grande's manager, Scooter Braun, said the star had "cried for days" over the loss of life in Manchester.
"She felt everything - every face they announced, every name, she wore on her sleeve. Every bit of emotion because that's who she is."
Grande also said she had been reluctant to return to the studio following the attacks, telling Billboard magazine that concluding her world tour had "been a lot emotionally".
"It would be nice to really hold my loved ones close for a little while, stay home for a little bit," she added.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Stars spread a message of love at the Manchester concert
Grande eventually entered the studio late last year, working with Martin and Pharrell Williams, who told the LA Times the singer's new lyrics were "amazing".
"The things that she has to say on this album, it's pretty next-level," he added.
No Tears Left To Cry premiered worldwide at 0500 GMT, with the UK debut on Adele Roberts' Radio 1 show.
It finds the star emerging from grief and encouraging fans to "come with me".
"Right now I'm in a state of mind I want to be in, like, all the time," she sings defiantly.
"I'm loving, I'm living and I like it."
Fans on Twitter were predictably enthusiastic about the new record, with the hashtag #NoTearsLeftToCry trending worldwide, while the Dave Meyers-directed video was watched half a million times in just 30 minutes.
The star's brother, Frankie Grande, also tweeted praise for his sister, saying:"Music was made to unite & with this brilliant masterpiece u have done just that."
Skip Twitter post by @FrankieJGrande ariana u make me so incredibly proud every singe day & today is no exception. i’m so proud of the way u have brought people from all over the 🌎 together tonight w/ #notearslefttocry. music was made to unite & with this brilliant masterpiece u have done just that. i love u. ❤️ — Frankie James Grande (@FrankieJGrande) April 20, 2018 Report
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
Grande’s first new single since the Manchester Arena attack is defiantly joyful, but takes time to send a few barbs at the haters
On 19 April, Ariana Grande teased fans with a snippet of her first new music to be released since a suicide bomber killed 22 people at her concert in Manchester last May. It sounded, from those 30 seconds, as though No Tears Left to Cry might be a ballad, with the 24-year-old turning her pliant vocal range to gospel. It would have made for an appropriate, traditional tribute, if a surprising one considering her previous responses to the tragedy.
Despite professional prude Piers Morgan bleating after the attack that she wasn’t demonstrating her grief in the proper way, Grande and manager Scooter Braun swiftly organised One Love Manchester, a vast benefit concert that pulled in performances from artists including Justin Bieber, Liam Gallagher, Coldplay, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus. It was one of the most joyful, defiant celebrations of pop and the communities it inspires that has ever been staged – so it makes sense that No Tears takes exactly the same attitude.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ariana Grande: No Tears Left to Cry – video
It turns out that the stately sample teased on Thursday was a feint. “Ain’t got no tears left to cry,” Grande sings in classic diva style, before switching to a more playful cadence: “So I’m pickin’ it up, pickin’ it up / I’m lovin’, I’m livin’, I’m pickin’ it up.”
Heralded by shuffling drums that briefly evoke Jamie xx’s Gosh, the Max Martin production turns into a vibrant celebration of dancing against the odds filled with with knowing nods to pop history: those lush, velveteen synth vamps in the house-inspired verses sound quite a bit like Madonna’s Vogue, the ultimate dancefloor-as-sanctuary banger, and the gospel/pop bait-and-switch that recurs in the chorus similarly brings to mind Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer’s 1979 hit No More Tears (Enough Is Enough). It’s an instant earworm – and gratifying, too, to see Grande tackle the single alone rather than with a guest, as she often does.
How Ariana Grande became an unlikely pop hero: ‘We are not objects. We are queens’ Read more
While No Tears is broad enough to enter the canon of timeless sad songs, it contains some satisfyingly specific lyrical barbs. “Don’t matter how, what, where, who tries it / We’re out here vibing,” Grande sings, a line evidently aimed at anyone who thinks such an attack would make people abandon the pursuit of pleasure. She goes further: “We’re way too fly to partake in all this hate,” she sings, maybe implicating opportunists who used the attack to entrench division. And most satisfyingly of all: “Can’t stop, so shut your mouth,” a recurring kiss-off aimed in the direction of anyone who would judge her – or her fans – for choosing to live, rather than mourn.
None of which should be surprising, really, given how Grande seized control of her post-Nickelodeon career, achieved A-list pop stardom without kowtowing to reigning EDM trends, and emerged as a bold voice on feminism and gender double standards. Tradition has never been her style.
The sleek, carefree party jam of the spring… as inspired by the Manchester bombing of last spring? That’s not a contradictory notion, at least not in the intent behind Ariana Grande’s new “No Tears Left to Cry,” which premiered on digital music and video services at the stroke of Friday. The single was rumored to be an “emotional” response to the 2017 tragedy — and maybe it is, in a manner of thinking — but its real aim is to not leave a wet eye in the house.
There’s a fake-out at the beginning, as Grande starts the highly anticipated tune in ballad mode… following in tradition of Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer’s similarly titled oldie “No More Tears,” which segued from a potentially weepy intro into pure disco. Here, Grande spends all of 35 seconds in deceptively choral mode, before a mid-tempo dance beat kicks in to announce the real message: Salt water sucks.
The verses offer some slow-mo house-music synth triplets right out of the ‘80s over that beat. When the chorus kicks in, it’s divided between Grade lifting her voice, pleadingly, for positivity — “Oh, I just want you to come with me / We’re on another mentality” — before lowering it to nearly spoken-word mode for a rhythmically chanted “I’m lovin’, I’m livin’, I’m pickin’ it up.”
More Reviews Tribeca Film Review: 'Blue Night' Film Review: 'Corbin Nash'
The track reunites Swedes Max Martin and Ilya, two of the writer-producers behind Grande’s previous “Problems,” now with Grande listed as co-writer (as she is for the first time on all of the tracks from her upcoming full-length release, according to sources). It’s not likely to ever be inducted into the Max Martin Hall of Fame, but it does serve its purpose, as an enjoyable teaser in advance of an album that’s probably going to have some grander emotional moments. It announces that Grande is at once affected and not affected by last year’s bombing. If there’s an element of doth-protest-too-much to the tune’s determination to push past and move on, maybe that’s as it should be.
The music video (watch it below), which offers Dave Meyers an unusual directing credit right up front, is a combination of “Inception” and Fred Astaire’s old dancing-on-the-ceiling movie musical routine: Nighttime cityscapes spread out overhead and sideways as well as underfoot (romantically, not menacingly, as in the Christopher Nolan movie). Grande doesn’t quite dance upside down, but she does move up and down the walls of a skyscraper corridor, looking like she’s not quite sure whether to be in the mood for exhilaration or rumination.
“No Tears Left to Cry” hedges its bets by offering a little of both, as the breeziest, most danceable kind of post-traumatic recovery anthem with dark undertones. It works, on that modest I-will-survive level, although if Grande really wants to be seen as growing as an artist, it’ll probably be a good thing if at least one or two other tracks on her upcoming album convince us that she still has it in her… some vestigial crying, that is.
