Ariana Grande’s 10 best songs, ranked

In just a little over a decade, Ariana Grande has proven to be one of the most resilient and adaptable pop stars. The 33-year-old singer nimbly ascended her way to the top since coming onto the scene in 2013, effortlessly transitioning from Broadway and Nickelodeon into a music career that’s spawned sold-out tours and Oscar-nominated blockbuster performances. Following her humble yet promising debut Yours Truly, her R&B-pop template has evolved tremendously, with Grande running the intensity of her emotions through a gamut of doo-wop, trap, EDM, house, and, famously, saxophone on one mega hit. 

With her stunningly soulful vocal range, Mariah Carey-adjacent whistle, and signature “yuh” ad-lib, Grande has found numerous creative ways to articulate the pain of dissolved relationships and the joy of finding new love (or self-love) in their aftermath. Synthesizing a theater-kid sincerity with the attitude of a seasoned professional, she’s oscillated between flirty, earnest, wounded, and gleefully spiteful with confident ease. And like other female pop artists before her, she’s navigated a ton of scrutiny around her public image, from laughably trivial controversies to highly publicized romances and breakups to a few race-fishing/cultural appropriation phases that fans such as myself like to endearingly poke fun at. Despite the loss and trauma she’s endured on both a personal and cultural scale and the valid concerns around the current state of her health, Grande has remarkably continued to hold her own. And with her eighth album Petal coming up, it’s about time the best of her discography was highlighted. 

Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand to compile this list. I can already picture some Arianators and millennial Twitter gays loudly nitpicking and disagreeing with my choices. In all fairness, it is difficult to rank and whittle down her best work to just ten songs, especially as some of her most compelling non-album efforts—the Christmas-themed ”December,” her winsome rendition of “Popular” from Wicked, and her duet cover with Miley Cyrus of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”—deserve some sort of recognition as well. You’ll also notice that tracks from 2024’s eternal sunshine are absent here, not because I don’t think there are any good ones from that album, but because there are too many from her other records that I can’t not acknowledge. Considering the legacy Grande has led thus far, I wanted to piece together a compilation of songs by her that aren’t just great on their own, but ones that most effectively represent who she is as an artist and how much she’s grown creatively over time.

10. “The Way (feat. Mac Miller)” (Yours Truly, 2013)

Though 2011’s long-forgotten “Put Your Hearts Up” technically serves as Grande’s solo debut single, “The Way” is a much more proper and successful introduction to her music, proving her knack for marrying the silky sounds of nineties R&B with bubblegum pop right from the get-go. Along with a clever sample of Brenda Russell’s “A Little Bit of Love,” the track includes a memorable, now-bittersweet feature from Grande’s ex, the late Mac Miller, whose playful rap verses paint a cute and charming portrait of young love. Culminating their back-and-forth with a piercing, Mariah Carey-style vocal run further cemented “The Way” as the Ariana blueprint, a promising start for her and a shining beacon for what was to come.

9. “R.E.M” (Sweetener, 2018)

Retooled from a Beyoncé demo, this deep cut off Sweetener fits snugly in the album’s lovey-dovey atmosphere. Against a sugary, bouncy, Pharrell-produced beat, Grande turns the whiplash of waking up from a way-too-real dream into a sweet and sexy swooner about infatuation. The production itself vividly mimics the hypnotic, meditative quality of slumber, while the lyrics range from the amusingly coy (“‘Scuse me, ummm… I love you”) to the casually explicit (“You know how to treat it / You know how to eat it / You know how to beat it”). Following the irreverence of Dangerous Woman, “R.E.M” marked a self-assured step for Grande in her full-tilt toward cheeky, horny wordplay.

8. “pov” (Positions, 2020)

As underwhelming as Grande’s sixth album Positions was, it ended strong with “pov,” a moving, genuinely stirring romantic ballad powered by angelic harmonies and subtle accents of strings and breathing machine hisses. Grande mines gorgeous, succinct poetry from the deeply relatable experience of wanting our loved ones to still love us at our ugliest and most flawed. “I want to love me / The way that you love me” goes the chorus, with Grande’s vocals rising in viscerally desperate passion as the song crescendos to a close. Though “pov” was written for her now ex-husband Dalton Gomez, the sentiments Grande drew here remain deeply resonant for anyone who’s wanted to be truly loved and seen, warts and all.

7. “Break Free (feat. Zedd)” (My Everything, 2014)

Right as EDM was beginning to crest in 2014, Ariana Grande joined the bandwagon with this eminently replayable club-pop banger. My Everything is filled to the brim with eclectic choices, but Zedd’s zippy, futuristic beats and Grande’s beautifully nonsensical, Max Martin-penned lyrics—“I only want to die alive” remains a fascinating enigma of a line—made this an immediate standout. Even though the production certainly shows its age, “Break Free” gave listeners an exciting peek into Grande’s curiosity around adding some genre-fluid, adrenaline-inducing flair to her then-modest sonic template.

6. “needy” (thank u, next, 2019)

There are plenty of solid confessional ballads from Grande’s arsenal and specifically off thank u, next, but that album’s second track sticks out not just for its inspired minimalist arrangement of smoky backing vocals and soft synth loop, but for Grande’s effortless rap-singing and stunningly unapologetic embrace of wanting emotional support, regardless of how clingy it might make her look. It’s one of her most personal and raw efforts, still maintaining the record’s sensual energy while unafraid to reveal its darker, sadder edges.

5. “Be My Baby” (My Everything, 2014)

Perhaps a left-field choice, especially since it isn’t a much-discussed part of Grande’s canon, but “Be My Baby” is worth recognizing and praising for Cashmere Cat’s plush, aerodynamic instrumentation, which remains one of the freshest and slickest contributions to Ari’s discography. Grande’s teasing come-ons shine even brighter alongside the Norwegian producer’s shimmering, shivering synths, almost making you wish she went more in this direction on later projects (check out their other excellent collaboration “Adore” to see what I mean).

4. “Greedy” (Dangerous Woman, 2016)

One of Ariana Grande’s most underrated cuts is this incredible bop from Dangerous Woman. Equipped with an exuberantly funky disco beat, “Greedy” makes a meal out of Grande’s simple yet palpable attraction towards a man she wants all to herself. The repetition of the songwriting might seem too easy and generic a formula to draw from, but it urgently captures the obsessive feeling of having a desire that’s so clear and direct, there’s no other way to talk about it. In the final chorus especially, Grande elevates the song to the next level by going an octave higher, building the infectiously galloping instrumental towards an electrifying finish.

3. “Into You” (Dangerous Woman, 2016)

Like “Greedy,” “Into You” is about harboring a feverish, uncontrollable amount of lust for someone, but Grande takes it even further from both a stylistic and lyrical standpoint. She squeezes every last ounce out of Max Martin and Alexander Kronlund’s multilayered production—a ghostly, pulsing thump, diva-like finger snaps, and an electronic roar that builds and builds and builds—and struts confidently towards a potential suitor as if he were her last, eventually leading to one of her best and most rousing bridges. The song’s emotional and sonic immensity has the power to summon gay guys to the dancefloor, redeem drag queens from botched lip-syncs, and give anyone the confidence to go after what they want without fear of holding them back.

2. “no tears left to cry” (Sweetener, 2018)

Following the horrific suicide bombing at her Manchester concert in 2017, Grande was understandably devastated, with its impact leading her to cancel the rest of her tour and retreat from making music for a bit. But rather than pretend as if nothing had happened in her next venture, Grande revived her crushed spirit with “no tears left to cry,” the lead single off Sweetener, which channeled the weight of tragedy through the healing propulsion of pop. Beginning with a levitational spoken-word intro before spilling into a soaring dance track, the song was optimistic and uplifting without feeling hokey, touching on the ripple effect of the attack without letting it curdle into hopelessness. Even with sudden ruptures in our lives, “no tears left to cry” is a testament to the importance of finding a way through regardless.

1. “thank u, next” (thank u, next, 2019)

If “The Way” is the Ariana blueprint, “thank u, next” is her fully designed architectural gem. A staggeringly mature ode to past lovers, the title track from Grande’s fifth record is radical not only in naming her former boyfriends, but also in granting them gratitude, a rarity in a pop landscape where artists often besmirch old flames. Similar to how she found a way to gracefully move forward after the 2017 Manchester bombing with “no tears left to cry,” Grande turned the compounded trauma of Mac Miller’s untimely death and her canceled engagement to Pete Davidson into something surprisingly life-affirming. Even as Grande has struggled to perform the song on stage due to the obviously difficult subject matter, she’s found a way to bend the song to her will however it suits her in the moment, most recently changing up the lyrics after getting back with her ex Ricky Alvarez, the one she “wrote a few songs about.” Such revisions reflect Grande’s powerful understanding of the malleability and contradictions of relationships, showing that you can still love someone, even though you’re no longer in love with them, but that you can always go back to them if the timing makes sense.

Sam Rosenberg is a filmmaker and freelance entertainment writer from Los Angeles with bylines in The Daily Beast, Consequence, AltPress, and Metacritic. You can find him on X @samiamrosenberg.

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