Ariana Grande - Star Spangled Banned Live Performance Review

Ariana kicks off the NFL season performing the national anthem. Her tonal range spans from G#3-E5. Ariana sounds clear and more resonant here, and she's clearly worked on her enunciation. She kept it simple, unlike other divas we know and love (erm, Xtina) but she pulled off a great performance with her smooth vocals. She notably uses more vibrato on her high E5 notes, "glare" & "free"  but it sounds nice and controlled. It was her first time performing this live since she was 8, so if she gets another opportunity, we should only expect improvement!!!

VMAs- Break Free/Bang Bang Live Performance Review

This year, Ariana Grande opened up the VMAs with Break Free, which turned into a mashup of Nicki Minaj's Anaconda and the three's hit song Bang Bang.

Ariana kicked it off with her EDM smash collaboration with Zedd, Break Free. She started off quite shaky. She sounded a bit more nasal than usual and struggled with volume as she could barely be heard in some parts of the verse. She begins to get more comfortable during the pre-chorus and executes her D5s well. She's noticeably a lot less stiff in this performance, she seems to be getting more comfortable with moving and around and dancing. Unfortunately this seemed to take away from her vocals as during the chorus, she was struggling with finding areas of the song for breathing resulting in just sounding breathy. Ariana then went into the bridge and nailed it, but her G5 sounded flat. Her performance would be good for someone else, but held up to Grande's standards, it was pretty average & mediocre. She used her head voice to go up to C#6 as well, while spinning showing her ease with it.

Nicki then came in with Anaconda. Since she wasn't singing, this isn't going to be very long. It was entertaining, to say the least..

Lastly, Jessie J pops up and begins belting the first verse of Bang Bang, the first time I've heard her sing it live without lowering the verses by an octave. She sounds great, although it sounds like she's using a lot of effort to sustain the whole verse in the fifth octave, Some parts sounded a bit pushed, but she delivered well, and had already made me forget about Ariana's previous shaky performance. After a bit of the first chorus Ariana comes out with a hella quick outfit change and does her verse. She sounds SO much better here, Break Free just isn't in her element and the whole song doesn't feel like her. In this verse alone Ariana has made up for the mess of Break Free, going above and beyond the studio version. She tackles the verse with ease and even throws in a dope G5. Then they join together for the chorus. They were singing in unison and the chemistry was kind of awkward, with Ariana throwing in some F5 belts. Nicki comes out, very professionally handling her wardrobe malfunction, which let me note, I didn't even realize till I read twitter comments later and did great on her rap verse. Jessie J comes in and shuts it down with her explosive G5s on her line after Nicki's verse and the three all dance around (Nicki not so much, lol) in a burst of adrenaline, to the last chorus, Jessie getting in another Eb5 belt and Ariana displayed yet more head voice, up to C6, which sounds okay, but uncomfortable. The performance ends and the three pose.

That's how you open the VMAs.



Break Free: 6.5/10
Bang Bang: 8.5/10
If you wanna hear the vocals more clearly here they are totally isolated

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