Another Record Broken? Thank U, Next!

This last Friday, Ariana Grande dropped her fifth studio album and the internet went crazy. Released in early November of 2018, the hit single Thank U, Next broke every record possible on the charts. The video currently holding the most viewed video in 24 videos with 55 million views. This quickly lead to Ariana announcing her fifth album only months after releasing her fourth, Sweetener, which is almost unheard of. Ariana announced the release of her album Thank U, Next, in early January and announced the release date of February 8, 2019.

After the release, it took five minutes to get to number one iTunes which is the fastest album in history to do so. Every trend on Twitter worldwide was a song title from the album each with thousands of tweets, with each song in the top 20 songs on iTunes. The top trend worldwide was #ThankUNext, Twitter verified the hashtag, allowing every user who uses it have a black kiss mark next to the hashtag representing the album cover. Since the release, Ariana has become the first artist in history to ever have the number one song, album and music video on both Apple music and iTunes simultaneously.

Every review of the album is claiming this is Ariana's best album to date. Each song is said to be "real" and "honest" as she makes many references to her personal life dealing with boys, anxieties, and dark memories of things that have happened to her in the past few years. Grande claims this album only took two weeks to write and was written entirely by her and her close friends. Each song that has been released from the album as singles thus far have entered the Billboard Hot 100. Ariana is the only artist to have the lead single from each of her first five albums debut in the Hot 100's top 10. She is also the first artist whose first two number-one songs both debuted at the top. She was able to achieve this with the songs Thank U, Next and 7 Rings, on the charts in mid-November and early February.

The night of the release, she announced her next single Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored and released the music video for it to build hype for the album. Many people were skeptical of the song due to the title, but the music video revealed the deeper meaning of the song about self-help and focusing on yourself. The song is currently number one on iTunes, the video is at 28 million views, and is rising on the Billboard charts.