Ariana Grande has done it once again with her new single “Boyfriend.” She collaborated with the Social House duo, Michael “Mikey” Foster and Charles “Scootie” Anderson, who happen to be the openers of her Sweetener Tour. The “Boyfriend” music video released on August 2, 2019, stars Grande and Foster as characters who have an undefined relationship and take the phrase “it’s complicated” to a whole new level.
In the video, Grande and Foster attend a party where jealousy visibly gets the best of these two. They each fantasize about taking out any flirtatious party goer’s that threaten their undefined relationship. We see Grande shoot an arrow through a woman’s hand as well as tackle another woman and go at her. While we see Foster literally rip a guy’s heart out of his chest.
A consistent theme throughout the song is this fear of commitment and trust. We see this in the lyrics:
“Careful with words, but it’s still hard to read me
Stress high when the trust low (Mmm)
Bad vibes, where’d the fun go? (Oh)
Try to open up and love more (Love more)
Try to open up and love more
If you were my boyfriend
And you were my girlfriend I probably wouldn’t see nobody else
But I can’t guarantee that by myself.”
These lyrics establish that they’d both clearly want each other and would like to be together, but they each can’t commit to a relationship by themselves because a romantic relationship isn’t one-sided and takes the commitment of two people.
Grande took to Twitter to discuss her latest single saying “I feel like this song captures a common theme in the lives of so many people I know! People want to feel love but don’t want to define their relationship & have trouble fully committing or trusting or allowing themselves to fully love someone. even tho they want to.”According to Entertainment Tonight.
She then continued by saying, “We wanted to make something uplifting that captures that feeling of being afraid to take the leap & trust, being afraid of being hurt or feeling like you won’t be enough for that person … but also how it feels to have a crippling crush on someone. ”
When she sings “we be so complicated/ but we be so smitten” is her explaining the feeling of admiration while also thinking the relationship is complicated because the preceding lyrics, “I might not be the one for you.” This plays into the whole idea of having a crush on someone but not wanting them to see anyone else although you’re not ready to define anything just yet.
In the song’s chorus she addresses their status saying:
“You ain’t my boyfriend (Boyfriend)
And I ain’t your girlfriend (Girlfriend)
And I don’t want you to see nobody
But you ain’t my boyfriend (Boyfriend)
And I ain’t your girlfriend (Girlfriend)
But you don’t want me to touch nobody else
Baby, we ain’t gotta tell nobody”
Foster’s verse focuses on the same theme but does so differently with the lyrics,
“Even though you ain’t mine, I promise the way we fight
Make me honestly feel like we just in love”
Unlike Grande, he does address that they might be “in love” even though they both aren’t admitting it to each other just yet.
Throughout the song the two admit that:
“I wanna kiss you (Yeah), don’t wanna miss you (Yeah)
But I can’t be with you ’cause I got issues”
In the end, though we see Grande shoot pink hearts out of her chest, which symbolizes her opening up and showing her love. The two then end up in a steamy bathroom make-out sesh where Scootie confusedly finds them. They embrace the passion that they had for each and stopped worrying about anything that was keeping them apart such as their “issues.”
Overall this song does a great job of tackling how complicated labeling a relationship can be.