Hey y'all, this is DJ Louis here dropping a preview of our most recent episode of our Patreon

channel, Pop Pantheon All Excess, where we are talking about Ariana Grande's 2020 album

positions. This was Ariana's most recent album and, in fact, her last album to date. And I thought

it would be good because we haven't talked about Ariana since she was

the subject of our inaugural episode of Pop Pantheon ever to use this episode as an opportunity both to

discuss positions which we didn't get to do much of on that episode and to check in with

Ariana's career where is she she's one of the most popular pop stars of her generation I know she's beloved by a lot of listeners to the show. And I thought it was a good time for us to check in on Ariana and also to look back on positions with three years of hindsight. So I invited Stephen Jay Horowitz, who was our guest on that inaugural episode of the show, the first episode of Pop Pantheon ever, back on to check in on Ariana, to talk about positions, how we feel about it now, how we felt about it then, what works on this album, what doesn't, and what it pertains for the future of Ariana's career, both it and her absence, I guess, from the pop space. So here's a little preview of that episode. If you enjoy it and you want to hear the full thing, plus so much more bonus content, access to the Discord channel, access to the guest list at gorgeous course,

etc., etc. You can subscribe at patreon.com slash Pop Pantheon or click the link in the show notes of

this episode. So here's that preview. The thing about positions was I was excited,

despite the lead single feeling kind of bland to me because I was like, okay, I'm interested to see what Ariana approaching her music in this way is going to continue to yield.

Yes, she like nailed it with Thank You Next.

And like, that was a confluence of a lot of interesting events happening.

Again, I don't think we can undersell the fact that when Thank You Next dropped, she was in the heat of an already successful album, and there was this major life event that had catalyzed so much interest in, like, what she was going to say and do next. So it was more than just kind of like, oh, it's cool to see a pop star like approaching the rollout kind of loosely.

It was also a very special and unique moment for her in particular, where it was like all of

these things were sort of coming together in this sort of whirlwind that created a lot of

interest in that record. And also obviously was an artistic engine for her that made her create some of her

best music ever. So I was like, what is that going to manifest like in a situation where like

not all eyes are on her? Because what I remember at that particular moment was that phase had

cooled down. And I remember kind of being like, oh, Ariana's back. Like it wasn't something we were

expecting or our attention

wasn't really on her at that moment in the same way. What did you know about like the new relationship?

Because that seems like a really important element of positions as well, because she had just

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