“Blazed” [ft. Pharrell]

“Blazed” is a rhapsody on the serendipity of romance, a nod to Ariana Grande’s recent (expeditious) engagement to Pete Davidson, shortly after leaving what she called a “toxic” relationship with Mac Miller. “What are the odds that you’d appear?/The universe so vast to me/Seven billion is on the Earth/Could’ve been anywhere, but you’re here with me,” she coos, flipping a JAY-Z preamble into a theory on cosmic alignment. She sings of love across past lives and two people sharing one soul. It’s a union of such long odds, she’s thinking of playing Powerball. More than any other song on Sweetener, “Blazed” is a honeypot for lovebirds.

The sneakiness of “Blazed” is how low-key it is compared to Grande’s signature work, which tends to maximize the potency of her voice, leaning into its power and not its precision. Here, Grande commands the galloping two-step funk rhythms without arming her industrial-strength larynx and vaporizing everything beneath her; she descends from her supernal, über-crooner perch to slink around the grounded sounds of the upright bass. She doesn’t usually occupy a register this low (one recent outlier, “The Light Is Coming,” is more a chant-rap oddity than a pop song), yet her voice is still so vivid and robust, so gorgeous that it shimmers like a bright streak of color across the already polychromatic Pharrell production. It’s a far cry from the anthemic power-pop of “No Tears Left to Cry” and other past singles; it’s a sound much subtler in its appeals, with Grande more soothed—and soothing—than she’s ever been. “Once I have you, I will never let you, never let you go,” she sings, holding onto each vowel, as if imitating the tightness of that embrace. “Blazed” is spellbinding in its wide-eyed wonder, conveying the instant love starts to make sense.