Song of the Week: "i wish i hated you"
Why I like Ariana Grande's non-Single track "i wish i hated you"
Welcome to a new format: Song of the Week. The idea behind it is to present you with a single song, released in 2024, that I’ve had on repeat for the past few weeks and months, and I want to share with you for that very reason.
I’ve created a Spotify Playlist that I’ll continuously update with songs I write about. You can find it here:
You can find the same playlist here if you’re on Apple Music.
This week’s song is called “i wish i hated you,” and I’d say it’s one of the lesser-well known songs off Ariana Grande’s most recent album, Eternal Sunshine (2024). The song is an album track, i.e. one of the songs that did not see a release in the form of a single.
Nonetheless, it struck me as one of the most successful songs off that album, because makes do with very little material. You’ll see what I mean shortly.
ILYA
The song is produced and co-written with Ilya Salmanzadeh, who goes by the artist name ILYA. He is a Swedish producer with Persian heritage, who made a name for himself through co-producing pop songs with Swedish pop legend Max Martin. Ever since their first collaboration, Ariana Grande’s “Problem” in 2014, ILYA and Max Martin have been successful in placing one song after another on the Billboard Hot 100.
Since 2014, ILYA has writing credits on Jennifer Lopez’s “First Love” (2014), Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” (2015), Ariana Grande “No Tears Left to Cry” (2018), Beyoncé’s “SPIRIT” (2019), among others. His first song to hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 was “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift, which he co-produced with Max Martin and another frequent collaborator, Shellback.
ILYA still works closely with Max Martin, and his associates, and, as a producer, contributed a total of ten tracks to the 2024 Ariana Grande album.
What I like about “i wish I hated you”
Key: G major
BPM: 131
The song is by far my favourite off the recent Ariana Grande album, followed by “Yes, and?” and “we can’t be friends.” If you like the song I’m writing about here, make sure to check those songs out, too.
The thing I like about this song is how economical it is. It is minimalist, one might say.
The first thing to notice about this particular song is that it doesn’t include any drums, a core component in pop music.
The instrumentation is paired down, consisting only of a hand-full of instruments, placing Ariana Grande’s vocals and the lyrics front-and-center.
The song is essentially about Ariana Grande reflecting on her previous and short-lived marriage with a real-estate agent. The lyrics reveal an ambivalence of thinking about her ex-husband from whom it would be easier to move on had he been a bit more of a dirtbag (“I wish I hated you”).
What I like most about the song how little musical ideas are in here. There are essentially only two ideas, a Verse idea and a Chorus idea, which take alternate.
The Verse presents us with a glittering, arpeggiated bell-pattern, underneath which we hear a simple, descending melodic line:
The idea is almost not developed, but kept static in a way to not compete with Grande’s vocals. There is no strong sense of chordal movement, or not even a keyboard that gives a sense of what the chords even are.
A second musical idea underpins the Chorus, which continues the bell pattern in the background, while introducing synthesisers playing over a plucked synth bass line. The chords are immensely satisfying:
G major: IV (C) – vi (Em) – V (D) – iii (Bm)
To illustrate the beauty and simplicity of this chord pattern, I’ve re-created it using Logic Pro’s Retro Synth stock plug-in. I’ve added some extra notes to the chords:
I love how the bassline draws the pattern of a ∞ shape, making the chords feel very circular, and seemingly stuck in a never-ending circle, mirroring how Ariana Grande finds it difficult to move on from her past lover.
It’s really a successful production, born from only two collaborators, Ariana Grande and ILYA. This is something quite rare in the world of pop music, where there are commonly multiple people working on a project together.
If you’re interested in learning more about ILYA, you can watch this brief interview with him and Max Martin, where they opine about their creative partnership and ILYA talks about his early musical influences, such his first digital audio workstation (Acid Pro, he now uses Pro Tools), as well as his idol, Michael Jackson.
There is also a (fairly) recent Billboard interview in which ILYA tersely describes his collaborations with Ariana Grande, Tate McRae, and Conan Gray.
I hope you enjoy “i wish I hated you” as much as I do & keep your eyes and ears open for the next song. What I’ll leave you with is Ariana Grande’s Vocals + my own re-creation of ILYA’s music production.
Your version sounds better, it’s like a hyperpop flip