Ariana Grande will be releasing her long-awaited fourth studio album Sweetener on August 17 and in the lead-up to its release, she's been teasing a number of its tracks. She first teased the song "R.E.M." on Twitter, before offering a preview of the song in her video for "No Tears Left To Cry," and it didn't take long for fans to notice that it sounded familiar.
Sometime in 2017, a snippet of a Pharrell-produced Beyoncé song tentatively titled "Wake Up" surfaced online, and one fan straight-up asked Ariana Grande if the song reworked the Bey demo. She responded, explaining, "well kind of, it's an entirely new song now but the hook was so dreamy." She added that she felt it "had to find a home," and that's how it eventually turned into "R.E.M."
It's not entirely obvious how Ariana managed to end up with the song, but Pharrell was confirmed to have worked on a number of other tracks on the album. Those tracks include "The Light Is Coming" featuring Nicki Minaj, "Blazed," and the Missy Elliott-featuring "Borderline." Let's just say Pharrell probably had something to do with the song ending up where it did.
