From Ariana Grande to Lady Gaga: Why is pop so cruel to its female stars?

As Grande's new album, ‘thank u, next’​, is released, Brian O'Flynn wants to know why the world is so desperate to see women in music fall

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“That’s what everyone wants right… Everyone wants to see the decay of the superstar.”

When Lady Gaga spoke these words on television in 2011, she was at the height of her fame – she was, unquestionably, the most dominant woman in global pop music. In 2019, this title belongs to Ariana Grande. She’s the “pre-eminent female popstar of the moment”, according to The New York Times; on “pop music’s top rung” according to Vanity Fair. Her fifth studio album thank u, next comes out this week, and two of its singles, “7 rings” and “thank u, next” have already shot to number one across the world. Last year’s number one album, Sweetener, also spawned three top 20 singles.

Pop music has a pre-determined path for its most successful women, one from which it rarely deviates. Those who dare to rise to such tottering heights must fall an equal distance. Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse are the starkest examples, but there was still an inevitability in the way Gaga was discarded after her third album, Artpop (her words on 60 Minutes were prescient given the way the media later tore her apart), and the way Taylor Swift’s image was systematically dismantled.

The pendulum of pop music swings back hard on its women, and Grande’s dizzying success has relied on her ability to override gravity’s diktat. After the Manchester attacks, public break-ups, public groping and a very public bereavement, she demonstrated her uncanny ability to outthink the media machine by dodging every ditch she could have been pushed into – emerging not angry, bitter, or broken, but triumphant. The loss of her relationship with comedian Pete Davidson, immediately after it was plastered all over Sweetener, should have been an embarrassing blow. Refusing to allow time for the wound to fill with poison, she immediately flooded our eardrums with “thank u, next” – and reframed the conversation to her benefit.

Following the triumph of Sweetener, the natural step would have been to submit to the lifecycle set out for pop women. You’ve had your moment, the world warns. As if anticipating and defying the decline now expected of her, Grande immediately announced the release of another album, refusing to allow the pendulum to swing back on her just yet. “I feel like there are certain standards that pop women are held to that men aren’t,” Grande told Billboard. “We have to do the teaser before the single, then do the single, and wait to do the preorder, and radio has to impact before the video, and we have to do the discount on this day, and all this s***… I just want to f***ing talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do.”

Grande’s success has relied on her remarkable resilience. She’s distilled all her hardships into bright, sparkling pop music – and she’s fought hard to do it all on her own terms.

In doing so, one can only imagine she has had to be incredibly steadfast and single-minded, ignoring the taunts of vile bullies (she had to turn off Instagram notifications after trolls blamed her for Mac Miller’s death) as well as the advice of labels who must have told her to obey the rules, wait before you drop another album etc, etc, etc. The risk that comes with shutting your ears to criticism is that you might just miss something important – many fans were disappointed with Grande’s half-hearted response to concerns about cultural appropriation in “7 Rings”.

She was accused of plagiarising Princess Nokia and 2 Chainz while lacing her song and video with the tropes and sounds of trap music. She alluded to the controversy by posting: “Thanks for opening the conversation... It’s never my intention to offend anybody.” Then she later dropped a remix of the song featuring 2 Chainz himself; perhaps this was her way of subtly repaying the artist who helped inspire the song? But it’s uncharacteristically evasive of Ariana (who has built a career on fan engagement) to not outright acknowledge all the complex racial power dynamics at play. She’s fallen off “the cultural appropriation tightrope”, said one article.

Walking a tightrope is a good metaphor to describe what Grande has been doing – she occupies stratospheric heights now, but stepping along that highwire as a woman (especially one who has suffered so much in public over the last year) requires an intensity of focus and self-belief that could become blinkeredness. As superfans and hypercritics crowd her, it’s hard not to lose perspective. What Grande reveals of herself in the release of thank u, next, the album, will hopefully prove that she’s maintained her impeccable balance. If she falls short, we would do well to work on our own perspectives – and remember that the standards we impose on young women are normally harsher than those we impose on anyone else.