Ariana Grande channels Catwoman in “the boy is mine” music video

Two years ago, New Yorkers rallied around the phrase, “The rats don’t run this city, we do!” It was less out of agreement with the sentiment than out of gleeful incredulousness at how ridiculous the city’s public officials could be: In 2023, Mayor Eric Adams proposed cuts to public library budgets and also appointed the city’s first “rat czar.” It is in this spirit that Ariana Grande begins her new music video, in which newly-elected mayor Max Starling (Penn Badgley) announces his first serious policy, which is unleashing stray cats to deal with the “great and insidious threat” of the rat population. “Fuck those rats,” agrees an obsessive Grande.

Yes, Ariana Grande is back in her New York City era, and if you haven’t heard, she’s in her villain era as well. Last year, gossips everywhere had a lot to say about her eyebrow-raising relationship with Wicked co-star Ethan Slater, casting her as the evil homewrecker who broke up his marriage (the singer is “not a girl’s girl,” his wife told Page Six). There are a few songs on Grande’s underrated eternal sunshine that deal with her complicated relationship to the media and the public, and her frustration that people who don’t know the full story would comment on it anyway. On “the boy is mine,” though, she leans into the femme fatale character projected upon her. “I’m usually so unproblematic,” she signs, acknowledging that this new relationship is a “sticky situation” for which she takes full accountability. “But I can’t ignore my heart,” she concludes, and goes after the boy anyway.

Grande literalizes her “bad girl anthem” in the music video by playing an actual supervillain—Catwoman, to be specific. It’s also a fun role reversal for Penn Badgley, who plays a dangerous, obsessive stalker on You. This time, it’s him who’s the object of Grande’s obsession, as she sneaks into his apartment and tries to seductively terrorize him into sipping her love potion. Except he doesn’t need a love potion, because he likes his sexy, crazy stalker just the way she is. May they live happily ever after, with many cats. (N.B.: There’s also a great cameo from Brandy and Monica, singers behind the iconic ’90s duet of the same name, as newscasters whose hopes may be a bit too high for the new mayor to enact real change in this town.)

Grande’s album eternal sunshine opened at number one on the Billboard 200 in March, the sixth number-one album of her career. Previous singles “yes, and?” and “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” both debuted at number one on Billboard’s Hot 100, becoming the female artist with the most number one debuts with seven total. Still, her album came early in the Popacalypse—a year in which an overwhelming amount of female pop stars are releasing new music—and didn’t reach the same levels of cultural ubiquity as contemporaries like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, or Billie Eilish. With “the boy is mine” headed to the airways, she may be able to remind the fickle public why they fell for her R&B-inflected pop confections in the first place.