Not while she’s still clearing [6], it’s not.

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[6.09]Mo Kim: One of Ariana Grande’s defining features as a performer is her tendency to add detailed flourishes to any song she’s on; at its best it feels lush, at worst superfluous. “One Last Time” uses Grande’s powerhouse vocals with uncharacteristic restraint as she wavers between recounting her guilt in a past relationship and insisting her former flame stay the night anyway. She holds it together for most of the song (while David Guetta’s instrumental shoulders increasing tension), and
when she finally breaks, the effect is nothing short of apocalyptic.
[8]
Megan Harrington: I realize that this is an Ariana Grande song and not her feature on an EDM single, but since she’s dealing heavily in the genre’s tropes and signatures, I feel fair pointing out that fully a third of any given EDM song’s success hinges on the listener’s ability to clearly hear and understand its simple lyric. Ariana Grande can’t sing more than three words in a row without slurping up enough syllables to make a chorus unintelligible. I’m not even drawn to lyrics, but I like knowing they’re there if I ever want to listen to them. From “One Last Time” I got a marimba doodle and “one moh time/i pomise le te le yuh go.” I want to sputter “E-NUN-CI-ATE” in her face like I’m Foghorn Leghorn.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: I really don’t see the point of her need to continuously try to write songs for an EDM Market when that’s not her lane, and it just never will be, but…
[5]
Alfred Soto: Facts are facts: Grande knows she’s got an indelible hook, a melody processed to sound like it’s played on a marimba and recalling what I’d hear coming out of Ultra Festival deejay tents. And I’ll like it on the radio. If she can make The Weeknd vulnerable and this piece of Velveeta compelling, maybe she’s cool after all.
[6]
Daisy Le Merrer: Big retail chains in some countries sometime use music bought wholesale from music banks to avoid paying local dues for “real artists.” Producers of this type of music often use real popular artists or tracks as a template, both for expediency and marketing reasons. If you don’t want to pay for the real 20/20 experience in your Zara stores (it IS a ripoff after all), maybe you can get more bang for you buck in Shuttershock’s R&B/Soul directory. When I end up in one of these places, I like to try and identify what’s being imitated by these tracks. Some are easy one to one matches, but some are too nondescript to really register as anything but “2015 pop.” All this to say that beside star power, this song really doesn’t offer anything for whoever’s in charge of music at big retail stores to pay for the genuine article, and the sandpapering of all of Yours Truly‘s quirks out of My Everything has been a real tragedy.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: David Guetta and the Kotecha/Yacoub/Falk collective attempt their best Zedd — one topline-hero melody pealing endlessly through an EDM stompscape — and succeed well enough at this boring task. But such a bell-clear hook calls for an equally clear voice, one that pierces, like Foxes on the apropos-named “Clarity”; Grande’s voice is too smoky and mushmouthed for the job. It’s an affectation that worked better on Yours Truly, and Grande would be advised to drop it now that she doesn’t have to be Baby Mariah anymore.
[4]
Luisa Lopez: The fact that this comes straight after “Problem” on the album gives it an almost unearned sweetness. Framed as a comedown from that high, a sad and thoughtful pause, it manages to transcend the treacly silliness of lines like “I don’t care if you got her in your heart/All I really care is you wake up in my arms” and puts Ariana in a role usually occupied by male crooners. She’s done wrong and she owns it with a sureness reflected in the absence of vocal histrionics, the whole song solemn and sober and rising to little more than the pitch of a phone call where your voice is tight with love. Even with all this, it still probably wouldn’t work without that gorgeous rise in the chorus, one — last — time never quite reaching anything, building on itself over and over.
[6]
Scott Mildenhall: It does help, but it’s not just the video that gives this an air of the apocalypse. Grande sounds unusually crestfallen in the verses, and when she moves to the title it feels like an all-or-nothing situation. Without overexertion, the production lends weight, and in the face of such devastation, she does similar.
[7]
Brad Shoup: I didn’t mention it at the time, but you’ll generally get me with a song where someone sings “andIknowandIknowandIknow”. It’s the throbbing need evinced by someone who needs to be overstood when it’s probably too late, who can’t, in this pivotal moment, take any risk that the thought isn’t coming out completely clear. Which, by the way: tune out everyone who holds an ear trumpet to Grande’s lyric sheet, as if feel holds less truth than argument. She coasts the tender melody with worried care: holding forth like Mariah on her sterling new-century singles, never pausing, because rests are the cousin of death.
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: Is there such a thing as minimalist pop-EDM? Because that’s what this feels like, with a real attention to details and an overall muted tone which suits Grande well. She sings the hell out of it without having to resort to Mariah-style belting, her vocal conveying warmth and sincerity.
[6]
Will Adams: “How are you feeling about it?” is a question I’ve fielded since late August in regards to my upcoming graduation from college. I’d always answered it the same, saying that I was dreading it, but by the time May came around, I would be ready to leave. Now, I’m less than three weeks away, and my experience has been the opposite. The sharp twinge of finality deep in my stomach has only just started; before then, there was no need for nostalgia, not with essays and readings and compositions to take care of. But now, I feel it. Every event is defined in terms of its last-ness: my last class ever, my last weekend to party ever, my last round of drinks with my freshman year roommates ever. It hurts the most when I think about my friends, especially the ones I’ve only just made. Where had they been before, I would think. Why couldn’t I let them into my life until now when I’m about to leave them, I would think. And now, with such little time left, I’ve begun making lists in my head of all the people I need to see before that day. There’s probably only time to meet with them once, over lunch or drinks or just texting. But I need those last moments, at least for the temporary illusion that I can keep holding on. I need them to refresh that memory, to make it clear enough so when I’m holed up in a new city I’ve just moved to, I can remember what it was like before the end.
[7]