appreciate you not coming out the gate insulting me or some s*** like some of these other posters, but i still have to keep it a buck: your post is filled with generalizations, reasoning i would disagree with and even a couple factual inaccuracies. im getting a little tired of replying to people about this and sort of regret making my post to begin with. i don't enjoy arguing with people on the Internet that much, needless to say. anyways:

1) You're never going to convince me of your line of reasoning here. Just because Sinead O'Connor "made it ICONIC" in your opinion (I personally have never found this song to be that spectacular, and ive never really enjoyed her much as a singer, but I digress. I'm very selective) doesn't mean that Prince Rogers Nelson, an objectively greater icon by many orders of magnitude in my humble opinion and in the opinion of sales metrics since niggas on here love that s*** even if I couldn't care less, couldn't have also made that song a smash, or given it to literally any other female singer Prince felt like giving it to. Sorry, but by my estimation she didn't make the song, Prince made Sinéad O'Connor. I don't know enough about her career to say whether or not she would've succeeded without that song, all we know is that she succeeded off of the work of Prince, period. Yes she sang it and she did her thing, but there would be no song without Prince. It's really very cut and dry, fam. A white woman sings a song written by a black man and that makes her whole career... kind of sounds like the other singer we've been discussing.

2) that's all well and good that you appear to think people should deserve writing credit when they don't actually write anything and just interpret/perform, but that's not how the world works and that's not how it should work. Ariana Grande doesn't "own publishing rights" to REM, and if she did she would be actually credited for any of the writing on it aside from partial lyric credit (I think it bears mentioning that she only receives this partial lyric credit on Wikipedia. When I check discogs or RYM Or some of these other sites, Pharrell is entirely credited along with the engineers). Pharrell is the only person credited as a MUSICAL composer and producer on the track. so that's wrong. and im not sure why you're assuming that the song "wasn't getting anywhere", we are talking about dudes who literally s*** out hits on the daily. If Pharrell is even a tiny bit at all like Prince, and most likely he is, nigga probably has hundreds of hits like REM in his vault. Beyoncé probably didn't do anything with the song because it didn't fit her vision for self titled which is likely around when her ref was recorded, and that was probably around the time (this is just speculation based on what ive heard about the dates, mind you) Pharrell showed her Blow and of course we all know how that turned out, classic Beyoncé x Pharrell track. Not sure why you're assuming what you assumed other than to make Ariana Grande look better.

3) whether or not something becomes a "chart topping single" doesn't mean s*** to me and is irrelevant to this topic, as I sort of implied earlier. It's also just so insipid to me to begin with that you would even consider that a marker of any sort of quality or achievement on the part of Ariana Grande, a white woman reaping the benefits of a white supremacist system which very obviously favors people of fair complexion, including black people with lighter skin. Really think about that. Anyway, Ariana Grande didn't make it a "chart topping single" either, she sang Pharrell's song and the industry machine behind her tried to make it into a hit. emphasis on tried, because the song didn't even do that well. It peaked at 72 on the hot 100, and it wasn't even issued as a single at all if my sources are correct, so in conclusion you're literally wrong about that too. And to end this argument off once and for all, there wouldn't even be a song without Pharrell, and Ariana Grande would either be a struggle cover singer on YouTube or still on Nickelodeon if it weren't for all the (mostly black, i once again state) men & women that wrote all of her music and that she built her wealth on the backs of. Or she would've actually been forced to make her own music. who knows maybe she would've turned out to be a lot more interesting and unique of an artist in that case.

4) weird Pharrell slander, L take. probably not gonna continue w this convo if that's the energy you have about this artist which is that he shouldn't even be alive everything else you said is just weird and kind of hateful and not based in any kind of reality, like "if you're so smart why didn't you make it a hit" okay... they literally had many other hits, a whole career's worth mind you, whereas neither Kelis nor AG are capable of composing anything at all let alone anything resembling a hit. kind of played yourself with that argument. Kelis is nothing but a pretty face and voice without her producers and songwriters, same with AG. to be honest with you in the case of AG i think she actually has the intellect and talent to actually learn to make music herself, but why should she? It's all done for her. And that's just sad more than anything else, it's like depriving an artist of their true potential. Maybe if she made her own music she wouldn't have all that time to completely change her face Frankenstein style with plastic surgery Anyway I digress, I'd rather leave the conversation there as an agree to disagree because im really not tryna write out any more forum essays.

PS there was some c***earlier that quoted me and tried to make my whole thing about trying to take away credit from women even though most of my favorite composers and musicians are women like Joni Mitchell and Esperanza Spalding or were assigned female at birth in the case of Beverly Glenn-Copeland for example. Just thought I'd mention that. also not only is REM an amazing track, but for the record i prefer AG version as her sort of sleepier delivery and the use of her lower register matches the vibe of the song a lot better than Beyoncé... doing her thing lol