[渣翻] Pitchfork Reviews:Yours Truly,6.5/10

原文地址：https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18591-ariana-grande-yours-truly/

Ariana Grande, a teenage actress turned singer, manages to skirt all kinds of retro with ease on her debut Yours Truly. It's not quite pastiche, it's bland in spots, but it's certainly not your typical 2013 pop album.

Ariana Grande，一个转型成为歌手的青年女演员，试图在她的处女专Yours Truly中引领复古回潮。这张专辑并不是一张简单拼凑的复古怀旧集锦，有些曲目听起来非常温柔清新，但是它绝对是2013年一张“非典型”的流行专辑。

Ariana Grande, a teenage actress turned singer, is bubblegum through-and-through-- and she’s already changed her preferred flavor. Her debut single, 2011’s 4 Non Blondes-sampling “Put Your Hearts Up”, was a generic Disney radio tune that she now publicly disavows. Apparently asserting control over her career, she's now dabbling in nostalgia, as is instantly clear when Hollywood strings and doo-wop vocals kick off the 1950s-styled “Honeymoon Avenue", the first song from her debut album. But why should you care about any of this? Because the minute her wordless vocals cut through the canned backing, they demand attention; her voice is smoky, world-weary and featherweight all at once, and the first thought that should come to mind is how did you stumble on this old Mariah Carey outtake?

Ariana Grande，一个转型成为歌手的青年女演员，一直以来都像泡泡糖一样很受年轻人的喜爱——她现在已经变换了自己的“口味”。她的第一支单曲，发行于2011年，采样自4 Non Blondes乐队的“Put Your Hearts Up”，就是典型的迪士尼电台流行曲风，她现在正急于摆脱这种风格。她对自己的音乐事业有着明显的自我掌控能力，因而她现在正试着向复古怀旧风格贴近，这些尝试在她处女专的开场曲“Honeymoon Avenue”中体现得淋漓尽致。这首歌曲中充满了好莱坞黄金时代风格的弦乐和doo-wop式的演唱。但是为什么这些元素会如此引人关注呢？是因为当她咬字含混不清的演唱出现时，你就会不由自主地忽略她的声音而去关注伴奏；她的音色总是像烟一样迷离，像羽毛一样轻柔，还带着些许厌世感，听到她的演唱后你的第一想法应该是，你是怎么无意中发现这个Mariah Carey代餐的？

That’s no small statement, but Grande is no small talent. And she’s self-aware. On an album that had a bit of a troubled gestation, the singer switched gears again through its making, opting for a 90s hip-hop soul vibe that awkwardly sits with the more doo-wop-indebted songwriting. Second single “Baby I” is most representative of where Grande is at this stage in her career. It’s a hodgepodge of familiar clichés, from its Britney-esque “yeah yeah yeahs” to the punchy horn riffs that somehow melt into a staggered hip-hop verse. It’s a cross-generational mess of influences, and all the better for it; Grande’s boundless energy means she can power through like no one else, tying hooks into knots with her voice as if it were nothing.

对于Ariana Grande和Mariah Carey如何相似，是一个不小的论题，但是Ariana本人也是才华横溢的。她有着非常清晰的自我认知。Yours Truly在准备时期就问题不断，于是Ariana又一次调整专辑制作方向，开始营造类似90年代hip-hop和灵魂乐融合的氛围，但是这仍然还是很难和doo-wop式的歌曲创作完美结合起来。第二支单曲“Baby I”更能反映Grande目前在她音乐事业中的处境。从Britney式的“yeah yeah yeah”，再到法国小号重复演奏的重音，以及与之错落穿插的hip-hop乐段，这首歌就是一堆老掉牙内容的大杂烩。这首歌受到了跨代际文化现象混杂的影响，却比实际情况要稍微好些。Grande充沛的精力和无限的能力让她一往无前，于是她就在这张专辑中挥霍滥用自己的声音资源，把旋律唱段搞得一团糟。

Her four-octave range is almost ludicrously powerful, and though it still feels like untapped potential, she has admirable control for a 20-year-old. Though her songs are simple, every time she runs across a repeat phrase, she’ll attack it differently, and her melismatic loops and athletic scales breathe life into even the most staid of lyrics. Even the most hackneyed songs, like the Grease-calibre cheese of “Daydreamin", are lifted by her intonation, and when she really sounds like she believes it, the results are fiery. Album highlight “Piano”-- a surefire feel-good radio hit in the vein of Katy Perry, but stripped lean-- benefits from Grande at her most impassioned, turning a charming conceit into a life-or-death matter as she shrieks “If I got my piano I know I’ll be okay!” Even this one feels irrepressibly old-fashioned, even if it's not clear exactly what era she's pining for this time-- how many 20 year old pop stars sing about dancing to a piano?

她四个八度的音域跨度出奇得罕见同时充满力量，尽管这些潜力还未被她开发完全，但是作为一个只有20岁的女歌手，她还是有着令人钦佩的对音乐的掌控能力。尽管她的歌曲内容都并不复杂，但是她总是尽力使用不同的技巧和情感来处理重复的小节。中世纪音乐风格的旋律和她清晰可闻的换气声能让听众从中直接感受到生活气息，尽管那些歌词写得实在是苍白无力无聊透顶。甚至是那些最陈旧过时的歌，例如油腻的“Daydreamin”，也被她强大的音准控制能力一手挽救，而且当她的演唱给人“她所唱的确是她所想的”的印象时，这首歌听起来就不那么糟糕了。专辑中最出色的歌曲之一“Piano”——一首与Katy Perry曲风一脉相承的、悦耳度极高的、注定在电台有着不俗表现的大热单曲，却“剑走偏锋”——讨论的话题是Grande一向最感兴趣的：非要将一个简单有趣的意象升华到事关生死的人生大事上，如同她尖声唱到“If I got my piano I know I’ll be okay!（如果我得到了一架钢琴，我会过得很好！）” 诚然，这首歌听起来依旧是非常复古的，尽管你不确定当下她是否和听众同处一个时代——又有几个20岁的流行歌星会在歌中提到“和着钢琴声跳舞”这样无趣的事情？

Songwriting is the album’s biggest flaw. Whether or not it’s Grande’s own inexperience or simply major label meddling sanding off the edges, Yours Truly is a very safe record. Mostly written by two of R&B's most mawkish hawkers, Babyface and Harmony Samuels, it’s built on cliché and tradition, and written professionally to a fault. Let's just say that her personality certainly doesn’t come from the lyrics. The blandness seeps into the production as well: the Lex Luger hi-hats and slowed-down southern rap vocals on a few tracks feel remarkably neutered, as if they were sampled from Kidz Bop: Trap Edition. It’s all antiseptic white surfaces, but maybe that works in her favour, because there’s nothing to distract from her vocals.

词曲创作无疑是这张专辑最大的缺陷。不论是Grande个人生活经验的缺乏，还是她身上固有的标签挫伤了进取的锐气，Yours Truly从各种意义上来说都是大打安全牌的一张专辑。这张专辑中大部分的歌都是Babyface和Harmony Samuels创作的，他们尤其擅长创作无病呻吟的R&B曲目。这些歌曲都是以传统甚至陈词滥调为基础创作的，尽管写作过程很专业，但是还是落入俗套。但即使我们就假设这张专辑里的歌词并不能完全反映Ariana的人格，那份平淡苍白仍然渗透在歌曲的制作过程中：在几首歌中，Lex Luger的踩钹和慢速的南部说唱显得尤其黯然失色，就像是从Kidz Bop: Trap Edition中采样的一样。（注：Kids Bop是定期推出的儿童音乐的汇编）专辑的制作乏味得就如同培养皿光秃秃的表面，但是也许这正合她口味，因为几乎没有人会忽视她的歌声而去关注其他的方面。

“I wanna say we’re going steady/ Like it’s 1954,” Grande sings on one of Yours Truly’s most earnest ditties, “Tattooed Heart". It’d be tempting to label her with the Grammy-baiting title of "old soul," but that’d be a bit diminutive-- she’s just a huge talent that admires her forebears, and knows their tricks very well. If her debut album has a strength, it manages to skirt all kinds of retro with ease, not quite pastiche and certainly not your typical 2013 pop album. Ending with its one concession to EDM, the feel-good stomper “Better Left Unsaid", Grande insists that she’s “gonna say things” that she shouldn’t. It’s a low-key sort of rebellion, but it’s encouraging-- if she owns up to that promise, there’s not much that could stop that voice from taking over the world.

“I wanna say we’re going steady（我想说我们感情已然坚固）/ Like it’s 1954（就像1954年发生的那些风流韵事一般）”在Yours Truly中她倾注了最真挚感情的歌曲之一，“Tattooed Heart”中，Grande如此唱道。也许这首歌是用来给Grande贴上“old soul”的标签，以在格莱美提名之中增加一些竞争力，但是这样的标签似乎并没有太大的说服力——她只是拥有致敬前辈们的天赋，擅长学习并使用他们的技巧罢了。如果非要指出一点优点，那就是这张专辑轻松地引领了复古的回潮，它并不是怀旧作品的简单拼接，当然也是一张“非典型”的流行专辑。“Better Left Unsaid”，一首悦耳的摇滚舞曲，以此为整专作结，体现了对当下风头正盛的电子舞曲曲风的妥协，也体现了Grande在“执着于讲述不应该讲述的东西”方面的坚持。这是一个相当克制的自我探索与自我解放，它值得鼓励——如果她能信守承诺，坚持自我，在未来就没有什么能阻挡这样的声音拥有世界。

注：本人非英专，翻译只是兴趣所在，如有错误请在评论区指出或者私信我，理性讨论不撕逼不吵架。本文内容和数字评分代表Pitchfork观点，不代表本人观点。（豆瓣星级和短评内容代表本人观点，两者间并没有必然联系）