Dangerous Woman

It’s not only the consistent songwriting clout that elevates this album from recent efforts by Grande’s teen-star peers, Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez. Even if most of it is co-written, the modish message of empowerment feels honest coming from Grande.

While some of these cuts work better than others, the range is impressive, as is Grande's measured, assured performance.

Held together by Grande’s skyscraping voice, Dangerous Woman throws a lot at the wall and, brilliantly, most of it sticks.

The album glides through styles, maintaining a slightly menacing yet sexed-up vibe throughout.

Given that she started out as an actress, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Grande can work convincingly in more than a single mode. But it’s still impressive how fully she inhabits the emotional environment of each song here, even when one directly contradicts another.

Even if the results are uneven at times. Grande does not need to force any sort of spirit, she is full of it already. She just needs to find the Dangerous Woman within herself and let her break free.

Dangerous Woman shouldn’t be taken particularly seriously as any kind of “maturation,” but that it still has some pretty good songs on it. Not counting the bonus tracks, there are only two outright throwaways.

Buoyed by this poise, Dangerous Woman possesses more personality than My Everything. It’s also far looser than anything else in Grande’s catalog.

She appears to be in the right place creatively, but she just needs to take her own advice and break free.

Though the album immediately shifts gears with the decidedly more contemporary title track, a sultry waltz in which the singer implores her man to “test [her] limits,” assuring him that, underneath, every 21-century woman is a “bad girl,” there are smart, unexpected nods to yesteryear throughout the remainder of Dangerous Woman.

These songs [“Greedy,” “Into You” and “Touch It”], which unite a strong persona--haughty, insatiable, a little manic, really into you--with a vivid pocket version of one style or another, are the core of a swift, heedless pop album, albeit one struggling to emerge from the false notes (“Dangerous Woman”) and rote 2016 obligations (Future) of what’s probably an executive-mandated bagginess.

Grande may not have settled on a sound, but she's still an outsized, dangerous talent.