“You need a bad girl to blow your mind,” Ariana Grande taunted us in 2014 on “Bang Bang,” her smash-hit collaboration with Jessie J and Nicki Minaj. In that crowd, Grande didn't really seem like the bad girl; maybe she knew one she could fix you up with? As she told Complex the year before,“I don’t see myself as sexy and I’m not comfortable being sexy and dressing sexy. I don’t see myself ever becoming a sex symbol.” But she seems to have taken the “Bang Bang” lyric as a mood-board inspiration for her third album Dangerous Woman, which finds the 22-year-old trading in the mini-skirts, go-go boots, and cat ears for a Sasha Fierce-like alter ego. As a result, Grande spends most of Dangerous Woman coyly flirting with desire, “bad decisions,” and independence. “Something about you makes me feel like a dangerous woman,” she sings on the chorus to the slow-burning title track, which is a few qualifications away from actual danger. There's something about the whole album that feels a bit like Sandy in her skintight leather outfit at the end of Grease, only in Ari’s case, it’s a latex bunny mask."

- Pitchfork