If there is one thing weve learned in 2014, its that Ariana Grande is cool as heck. While the fact that she is cool is undeniable, what makes her cool is slightly less clear. Luckily, last week she released a music video for Love Me Harder featuring The Weeknd and its full of examples of what makes our girl Ari so cool. So, lets take a look at the video and then get into some of the examples.
The first thing that makes Ariana Grande cool in this video is her overall performance. Directed by Hannah Lux Davis who worked with Ariana recently on the Bang Bang music video Love Me Harder features a lot of Ari preforming by herself in highly stylized locations. It addition to being Arianas most mature video to date, its also her sexiest, and a lot of that comes from her performance, which features a fair about of bending and arching.
Its one thing to be more mature, but its a whole other ball game to get on The Weeknds level. All it takes is a short walk down The Weeknds musical catalog to realize that dude doesnt hold anything back when singing about grown folks business, and Ariana keeps pace with him in this song and video. Nothing feels forced or unnatural, its just a sexy lady and a sexy dude singing about hard lovin', and Hannah does a fantastic job capturing the chemistry between the two artists. All of this adds up to some pretty cool stuff if you ask me.
While everyone (including us) has been talking about how this is Arianas most mature video to date, and it definitely is. However, she hasnt completely abandoned her youthful spirit, seen most notably in the cat ear hairstyle that she rocks at times in the video. Not many artists can maintain a youthful energy in their ballad music videos, but Ari definitely is pulling it off. She hasnt fully shaken her Nickelodeon roots, but this video strikes a great balance that builds on Arianas grown as an artist.
"Love Me Harder" was produced by Brandon Bonfiglio for London Alley Entertainment and can be found on the album My Everything.
