Is it too much to say that, at this end of 2018, "Thank U, Next" feels like the only song that has ever been written? Probably. But Ariana Grande's airy, DGAF tribute to exes can legitimately claim ubiquity at the very least; it is currently sitting atop Spotify's Top 200 list, with almost 40 million weekly streams. Making platinum, inspiring a proliferation of post-breakup memes, and (almost unbelievably) earning Grande her first ever #1, it tapped a collective pressure point, becoming the thing we all revived broken hearts to or simply mouthed on the way to work.

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Nobody needs a degree to understand the song's cultural dominance. Melting like sherbet on the tongue, "Thank U, Next" has a silvery lightness, espouses an unforgettable "dirt off your shoulder" attitude, and addresses not one, but two of Grande's personal yet public tragedies—in a simple, earwormy 3.5 minutes. And it's witty, dressing up well-earned wisdom with a cute little snarl. "I'm so fuckin' grateful for my ex"? Iconic.

But the context of the song really solidified its impact; Grande released it a scant few weeks after her and Pete Davidson's breakup, and a mere 3o minutes before Davidson was due to appear on Saturday Night Live. That's both beautifully petty timing, and fast production in the pop world—basically instantaneous. It seemed to have sprung fully formed out of Grande's head like Athena, during prime Venus retrograde season (a.k.a. the planets decreeing that love will suck), to boot. "Thank U, Next" kind of seemed like it just had to exist.

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It was also steeply different from its predecessor in Grande's catalog, Sweetener. Grande's fourth album is a perfect chronicle of infatuation turning into love, all pastel-hued dreaminess and the swagger you get, I’m sorry, but from sex. A coherent and sophisticated record, Sweetener landed emphatically thanks to the accompanying tableaus her IRL love life provided—the tiny ponytailed singer gazing intently at the gangling Davidson, red lollipop at her lips; their pet pig tottering around on Instagram stories; a supernova-speed engagement. Music, lyrics, tabloids: the "Grandson" love affair had it all.

But instead of being a ballistic revenge song or a droopy hymn of malaise, "Thank U, Next" was a follow-up froth of self-love and appreciation for past relationships (no matter how "fuckin'" tongue-in-cheek). Instead of tiptoeing around the particulars of her life like many other singers, Grande dared to name her former partners—Davidson, Mac Miller, Big Sean, Ricky Alvarez—making the track's revelations feel genuine. And the upshot wasn't an "on to the next one" or a "you'll regret this" kind of vibe; it emphasized Grande's new relationship, with herself, which would sustain her and outlast any other. For that alone, it was out of the ordinary, pop-wise, and a step in a new direction for her.

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Grande isn't the only pop star shifting focus to herself, and pushing old narratives about themselves to the next stage. A bracket of her female peers are doing the same, and it's making pop music feel whipped-up and verdant. For instance, Carly Rae Jepsen released just one song this year, to tide us over until her new album comes in 2019. "Party For One": Self-explanatory, really, isn't it? The chorus chirps:

Party for one

If you don't care about me

I'll just dance for myself

Back on my beat

Coming from the pop star who all but crowned herself the crush queen, this is a different tune. Jepsen first came to notoriety while cosplaying as infatuation itself, with 2012's "Call Me Maybe," a sunny, optimistic plea aimed at the object of her affections. Its perfect hookiness lodged it in brains and playlists for years afterward, and it became shorthand for pop so irrepressible it could disarm the crustiest naysayers. Emotion, her acclaimed third studio album, launched in 2015 with the equally effervescent and heart-eyed "I Really Like You." That whole record feasted on limerence, the special weightlessness of early love—from the carefree sax solo (!) that kicks off the opening song to the sleepy contentment of closer "Favorite Color." There's nothing super deep about Jepsen singing about being happy by herself; it's just fun to see that the flipside of a crush doesn't have to be despair.



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Robyn's Honey is in many ways an album inspired by other people—released in October, it follows the death of the Swedish musician's collaborator and friend, Christian Falk, and the demise of a long-term relationship. Its opening track, "Missing U," sets up shimmering synths around the "empty space you left behind," and "Human Being" is a beckoning finger in a nightclub ("Move your body closer to mine").

Behind the music, though, was a lengthy internal journey. Fans fretted because there wasn't any Robyn solo material after the three Body Talk LPs in 2010. (An EP came out in 2015, which she had worked on with Falk and others.) Rather than capitalizing on her ascendancy after achieving success, she opted out of the musical rat race. "It was just this incredible freedom," she told the New York Times. Instead, Robyn spent five years in therapy. The process, she told ELLE, took her to “a softer place where I felt more vulnerable and more excited about music than I’ve been in a very long time.”

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Robyn is the progenitor of dance-jams-for-the-sads—per the first season of Girls, "Dancing on My Own" is the trustiest way to lift oneself out of the blues. The bird-flipping anthem from Body Talk Pt. 1, "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do," is proof that she's been interested in her own agency and person for at least a decade already. The fact that Honey comprises thoughtful, sophisticated bops about heartbreak and loss simply falls in line with that; she already writes about herself and bucks boring romantic rules. But the way Robyn took her time to make the record, leavening sorrow and unearthing what felt authentic, should be recognized as an even bigger feat of self-understanding and self-determination. Audiences wanted more, sooner. She wanted herself, recharged, richer.



Perhaps the most unusual of these pop-music transformations, though, came from Lana Del Rey. Self-styled America's sweetheart, Del Rey inhabited a femme fatale persona as tragic as it was prettily nostalgic. On her first big-label album, Born to Die, she sang of James Dean–like suitors who'd love and leave her, invoking the beleaguered specter of Lolita—utter youth, heart-shaped sunglasses, and all. A victim of men and love and the fickle attentions of showbiz, the Lana Del Rey character was one doomed to foregone conclusions and pre-existing archetypes. Her music was not boring or even pat, despite how familiar the tropes were, but her oeuvre always felt somewhat contained; we all know the ending of Sunset Boulevard. When has a Hollywood woman ever had a happy ending?

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"Venice Bitch," her latest single, luxuriates in that legacy too—but also mutates it and takes it somewhere altogether more weird. You might not even have heard the song, even though it was released in September; at nine-and-a-half minutes long, it's hardly tailored for radio. Starting off much like any other Del Rey cut, "Venice Bitch" rolls '60s American clichés around in the mouth:

Ice cream, ice queen

I dream in jeans and leather

Life's dream, I'm sweet for you

Prostrating herself in front of the godly guy she adores ("It's me, your little Venice bitch"), this Del Rey seems cut from the same old Lolita-esque cloth. Just a couple of minutes in, though, things change: dreamily and slowly, but surely. Accompanied by squiggly psychedelic guitars, the rest of the song consists of Del Rey echoing and repeating herself over and over. "W-w-w-w-w-whatever / Everything, whatever," she hums, almost mindlessly, turning herself inside and out. It's a more a spell than a song, addictive and haunting. "Venice Bitch" is what an unraveling sounds like: the story she's told so many times before, replayed so constantly that it's breaking down.

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Which is not to say that Del Rey is on her way to the bottom. "Venice Bitch" is an artifact of contemplation and subversion, and her best song to date. Who is she going to be now? Her forthcoming album, titled Norman Fucking Rockwell, holds some clues. It deliberately targets the myths of great men: "It's kind of about this guy who is such a genius artist but he thinks he’s the shit, and he knows it, and he, like, won't shut up talking about it," Del Rey said in an interview. It also promises to dwell on the tales of devastated female geniuses (the next single, as yet unreleased, is called "Sylvia Plath").

That's a different move for Del Rey. In her earlier records, men were movable feasts, inspiring and anchoring her life while drifting off into the sunset themselves without a thought. But that tape's run out. Now, she's questioning the stories left on the ground for her like dirt. No longer will she be the powerless little woman, left behind in the American Dream's wake.

It's a new chapter for her, like it is for all these women. We wouldn't expect pop stars not to think about love, lust, and whatever happens afterwards; pop music would be useless if it didn't deal with all of that. Four of the most interesting artists turning away from the way we're supposed to talk about love, though, and assuredly towards themselves, carves out another landscape. Boy meets girl—for many, that tale's inevitable. But how it gets told is changing.

Estelle Tang Senior Editor Estelle Tang is the former senior editor of ELLE.com.

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