Ariana Grande: eternal sunshine Album Review

As a “concept record,” eternal sunshine isn’t nearly as cohesive of a divorce record as, say, Adele’s 30, but Grande smuggles in some interesting threads regardless. The meta-narrative of the public and media as her fickle and unappreciative lovers is a subtext that runs throughout eternal sunshine, with “yes, and?” as the most full-throated clapback against parasocial mouthbreathers speculating on her private life. Grande clearly relishes her ability to twist the knife as a songwriter. Some of her most shocking and funny lines come through as she plays up the spectacle of her divorce for all its horror: seemingly referring to her marriage as a “situationship” (“don’t wanna break up again)”, alluding to cheating (“eternal sunshine”), flagrantly spreading disinformation (“true story”), and finally providing us with the gorgeous couplet “Your business is yours and mine is mine/Why do you care so much whose **** I ride?” It’s to her credit, that she’s not only lived up vocally to the initial Mariah comparisons, but has a strain of surreal humor and outright weirdness that informs so much of her music.

During a production lull on Wicked brought on by the SAG strike, Grande flew to New York and reassembled her usual cast of collaborators including Max Martin, Shintaro Yasuda, and Ilya Salmanzadeh, albeit with the notable absence of her longtime songwriting partners, Tayla Parx and Victoria Monét. The record is split between the pillowy, mid-tempo R&B that we’ve come to expect from Ari and some interesting but shaky left turns. The leak and subsequent TikTok virality of her song “Fantasize” inspired Grande to release her own take on ornate Y2K production with “the boy is mine,” an excellent, precision-engineered track with stuttering, flashy synths that leave enough atmosphere for her voice to soar. Other genre flourishes are less successful. The orchestral disco of “bye” feels one-dimensional set against the mirror ball radiance of her voice and the alt-rock strum of “imperfect for you” suggests we’re getting an anthem but barely crests above a lullaby.

In contrast to Positions, where Grande flaunted the full extent of her range with whistle notes and filigreed melisma on nearly every track, eternal sunshine is an exercise in restraint. Apart from the scorching R&B fireworks of “true story,” there is very little outright belting on display, but her talent as an arranger shines with some absolutely gorgeous harmonies across the board. On songs like the title track and “we can’t be friends,” Grande adopts an aching tone that’s reminiscent of her heroine, Imogen Heap, communicating both a bruised strength and highlighting her underappreciated ability to convey more subtle colors with her voice. The latter track’s knockoff Robyn beat wouldn’t be as nearly as affecting without Grande’s gorgeously wounded performance, and what she makes out of “Know that you made me/I don’t like how you paint me, yet I’m still here hanging,” as if she were being pierced by her ex’s misunderstanding in real time.

Grande’s lyrics don’t always rise to the sophistication of her vocals, she occasionally settles for stock phrases (“I’ll play the villain if you need me to”) or scrambles for syllables (on “don’t wanna break up again” she rhymes “codependency” with “therapy”). Between Monét and Parx’s absence, her newfound enunciation, and the more obviously canned Max Martin instrumentals, a less generous interpretation would be to wonder if the limits of her songwriting didn’t constrain the more vocal pyrotechnics. But taken from another angle, it’s interesting to regard her choices as a step toward becoming a fundamentally different kind of singer. In an interview with Zach Sang, Grande emphasized the importance of distinguishing between herself as a person and a pop star, and this more subdued, less showy register could very well be the ticket, a carefully considered adaptation for protecting her hard-won sense of self.