"The Way" is a song recorded by American singer Ariana Grande for her debut studio album, Yours Truly (2013). It was written by the song's producer Harmony Samuels, alongside Amber Streeter, Al Sherrod Lambert, Jordin Sparks, Priscilla Ahn, Brenda Russell, and Mac Miller, who is featured in the song. "The Way" was released on March 25, 2013 by Republic Records as the lead single from Yours Truly. The song's backing track is based on the piano melody from Russell's 1979 song "A Little Bit of Love", and the song has melodic and lyrical similarities to Big Pun's 1998 song "Still Not a Player", which also samples "A Little Bit of Love".

In the United States the song debuted at No. 10 and peaked at No. 9 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100 becoming Grande and Miller's first top ten song on the chart. This made Grande the first top 10 arrival for a lead female artist making her first Hot 100 appearance since Yael Naim, who launched with "New Soul" back in 2008. As of March 2016, "The Way" has sold 2.3 million copies in the United States and has been certified triple platinum.

On December 12, 2011, Grande released her debut single "Put Your Hearts Up," a bubblegum pop song with a vastly different style of music and target demographic than "The Way." Whereas the lyrics in "The Way" deal with the subject of a flirty, romantic relationship, some sections with sexual implications, "Put Your Hearts Up" was a song aimed at young audiences, with lyrics about making the world a better place. During a radio interview on KIIS-FM on March 25, 2013 about her debut single, Grande confessed that she had in fact "hated" both the music video for and the song itself, considering it to be "a terrible first impression." She added that she had wanted to "pretend it never happened before it already happened" and that she had felt no enthusiasm to promote the song at the time.

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