2014Released
3:34

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Break Free. By Songfacts®.

This song was produced by the Russian-German producer Zedd, who is best known for his hit tunes "Clarity" and "Stay The Night." The pair got together after Zedd overheard Grande performing at a label showcase while he was backstage, and mentioned to his team that he wanted to work with her. "[Grande's voice] is super-recognizable, it has a unique texture," he told Billboard magazine, "and really, that's all I'm looking for in a singer, is to have a voice that is really special and different from other voices you hear everyday."

The joy-infused song finds Grande celebrating her independence from a past love. Speaking with Billboard magazine, she called the experience of working with Zedd, "fantastic and super-experimental." Grande added: "I never thought I'd do an EDM song, but that was an eye-opening experience, and now all I want to do is dance."

The song features the awkward lyric, "Now that I become who I really are," written in order to force a rhyme from the song's previous line, "Never by the hands of a broken heart." Speaking with Time, Grande seemed sheepish about bending the laws of the English language, claiming the erroneous lyrics were Max Martin's and not hers. "I fought him on it the whole time," she told the magazine. "'I am not going to sing a grammatically incorrect lyric, help me God!' Max was like, 'It's funny - just do it!' I know it's funny and silly, but grammatically incorrect things make me cringe sometimes." Grande eventually conceded to the Swedish hitmaker. "I was like, whatever, let's do it and have some fun," she said. "I need to shake it off and let it go and be a little less rigid and old. I'm like, 90. I need to not be that old." This wasn't Max Martin's first offense against the English language. Linguists recoiled with horror, for instance, at his "Sadness is beautiful. Loneliness is tragical" from Backstreet Boys' 2000 international hit "Shape of My Heart."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Break Free.
GKey
MinorMode
4/4Time Signature
130BPM

Album

The album Break Free is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Break Free.
Universal Records
© 2014 Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
℗ 2014 Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

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