With the music world in shock over the death of Mac Miller due to (a somewhat inevitable) overdose (something Demi Lovato has continued to succeed at managing to evade), the one person who still has yet to really say something is the one person everyone wants/is expecting to: Ariana Grande (though she did put a captionless image she once took of him up yesterday). Because people are trolls by nature, however, Grande was left no choice but to disable the comments on her Instagram as accusations like, “THIS IS YOUR FAULT,” poured in. While no, of course it’s not Grande’s fault and she is right to say that it’s wrong to vilify women for not wanting to stay in a toxic relationship, there is one little recently released track on Sweetener that makes the entire death just slightly more awkward.
The goading ditty, for those of you without the presence of mind to listen to Sweetener on the regular, is “better off.” Sandwiched in between the more effusively loving tracks, “borderline” and “goodnight n go,” “better off” stands out most of all for how non-amorous it is on an album unspokenly dedicated to Pete Davidson. This one, instead, details all the ways in which she’s, that’s right, better off without Miller after noting, “I’d rather just watch you smoke and drink, yeah” as opposed to actually participating with him (Grande being slightly more averse to such activities so that she can preserve the integrity of her highly profitable pipes). It is in this way, with his primary commitment being to substances as opposed to her, that Grande ultimately found, “I’d rather your body than half of your heart/Or jealous-ridden comments/That come when you let in them feelings that I don’t want.” Those feelings she didn’t want became much more uncomfortable when Miller wrote of Grande on “Dunno” (from this year’s Swimming), “You was coughin’ when you hit my weed/But I’ve never seen you feel that free/So cute, you wanna be like me.” The lyrics only served to make Miller look like the sadder lot between the two of them in terms of being “jilted,” his hit and run and DUI charges in May of this year, around the same time Grande was going public with Davidson, only adding to a certain “pathetic loser” trope.
Thus, while it’s every artist’s creative right to speak about whoever has affected them either negatively or positively in their life (though, for the most part, it’s usually negatively), Grande’s commentary in “better off” comes at a particularly unfavorable time for her. A time when ignorant tongues are quick to wag and accuse with the black and white verbal assault that Miller would have lived had Grande not “broken his heart.”
The thing is, however, a self-destructive person is always bound to wind up enduring the same fate should they go down the often irreversible path of self-destruction. It’s just a matter of which reasons they will cling to in order to justify said self-destruction. This is precisely why Grande had to realize, “I’m better off without him/I’m better off being a wild one/On the road a lot, had to keep it a thousand/So that I’m better off not being around ya.” And now, she’ll never have to be again in any capacity.
But in trade for saying her piece in the song, it would seem, the subject itself had to be sacrificed. And is there any worse way for a relationship with an ex to truly end than with you offering up a loosely shit-talking track the same year he decides to kick the bucket? Probably not. And while it might technically leave Grande “better off” without ever having to worry about what kind of lyrical sob story he’ll pull next, it doesn’t make her so in terms of being forever demonized in the eyes of a public that somehow holds her responsible for something the Fates had already designed.
https://youtu.be/LIxIJp7YutY
