album review: ‘eternal sunshine’ by ariana grande

…I don’t think I’m the only one who has had a bad feeling about this release.

Granted, some can argue that at this stage of her career Ariana Grande has nothing left to prove, and while positions may have underperformed compared to thank u, next, I’m willing to accept some circumstantial factors there like one of the worst possible weeks in 2020 to drop, an album that was by necessity more of a slow burn, and, true to form, a woefully uneven choice of singles; ‘nasty’ and ‘off the table’ with The Weeknd were right goddamn there, come on. But there were messier factors heading into this release - aside from the fact she’d be working uphill without TikTok promo thanks to being on Republic under UMG, the buzz around her divorce as subject matter for the album had a different feel, especially compared to when she had mined personal drama for more tangible success, notably because the framing felt off; ‘yes, and’ being a weak single didn’t help matters with a video that was calling out critics that didn’t feel all that accurate. But poor single choices have been emblematic of her whole career, this looked to be a very short, breezy affair - although I found it dubious to evoke callbacks to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for a nuanced breakup album, given Jhene Aiko already did that for Souled Out ten years ago for one of the best R&B records of the 2010s…

So let me put this gently for everyone’s sake: I think Ariana Grande delivered an album that she thinks will satiate all the controversy and expectations without really having a firm grasp on either, which is why the album feels so smooth, streamlined and efficient, targeted to handle what she thinks is the issue… but has also left a lot of folks really frustrated because after nearly four years, it has the sound of music being the last thing on her mind. Now I think there are more nuanced elements of this album that I’ve been looking for Ariana Grande to deliver for some time now, even if I think by extension the execution has been somewhat mishandled, but there is one thing I’d like to establish from the jump: I’m not one to get into an artist’s personal behind-the-scenes drama in order to legislate an album - this isn’t a callout or defense or “tea” video, artists are allowed to write fictionalized versions of their relationships and breakups, and the truth is that especially in cases where cheating is alleged, nobody will have the full scope of the entire story, and I think there’s a level of entitlement to some celebrity watching and speculating that’s more than a little puritanical and gross; it’s going to be mentioned in passing because it’s the very obvious subtext behind this album, but it’s not going to make or break this album one way or the other for me.

So I think the first step here is trying to actually meet Ariana Grande where she is rather than where you want her to be, and the first thing you’ll notice is a change in performance: the vocal runs are more restrained, her diction is leaps and bounds better, but there’s a lingering feeling that she’s holding back the hardest emotions; she could luxuriate in the mess of previous projects especially thank u, next, here you can tell her emotions are more conflicted and complex, which makes sense when you’re actually dealing with a divorce and it doesn’t fall out easy, something that a younger audience who is less experienced may not understand. That’s a double-edged sword: you can argue Ariana Grande is most effective as a belter who can command a huge mix, it’s one of the reasons the best moments of sweetener were so effective, and this album necessarily plays to a smaller scale - you’re not getting anthems this time, this is trying to be more complicated. And those layers are set up early: the relationship spark has sputtered out, it consistently doesn’t feel right with all the fights and trying to make up and make it work isn’t clicking, there may or may not have been cheating involved - the title track seems to imply it, or at the very least that her ex found someone else very quickly in a similar way that she did. And this is where things get muddy because some will say that she has played into the homewrecker narrative before and point to songs like ‘break up with your girlfriend I’m bored’ - you know, what I would argue is the worst song in her catalog and the worst possible conclusion to thank u, next, but it misses an important factor as to why: Ariana Grande is really bad at playing the “bad girl”, which has been consistent her entire career. It’s one of the reasons - paradoxically - that I have always liked the song ‘Dangerous Woman’: if you go into that song and think that she’s not convincing at all as a femme fatale, you’re absolutely right, but that’s never been the point, it makes her ‘feel’ like a dangerous woman, the fantasy and transgression is what gives it any edge. Incidentally, I don’t consider the vast majority of her sex songs to frame her as the ‘bad girl’ either - that’s playing into the madonna/whore complex and a specific Americanized purity culture that I refuse to dignify for being sex-negative with a long traditional of misogyny, although what can be interesting about Ariana Grande is how much she’s internalized that too; the lingering Italian-Catholic upbringing can’t have helped either.

Now the one thing I’ll give ‘break up with your girlfriend I’m bored’ is that it gets to the tedious side of being needlessly cruel, but eternal sunshine isn’t trying to be cruel - if anything, the reality of loving and being married to someone in a long term relationship is that you get to see all their flaws and failings in plain view alongside the reality and lingering good emotions you have, it’s how you get songs like ‘i wish i hated you’. And when you remember that Ariana Grande’s parents divorced and there’s been a running media narrative that she’s dated extensively and has been framed as a homewrecker, fairly or not, she desperately wants this to work; there’s literally a song on this album called ‘don’t wanna break up again’. Indeed, one thing that eternal sunshine really exposes is just how fragile one’s sense of self can be in the throes of a bad breakup and the media narrative that’s telling you who you are, which is why on ‘true story’ she says that she’ll be the villain and bad guy and be good at playing that part be it for her ex or the world at large as she implies on ‘we can’t be friends’, and when in an interview she admits that ‘true story’ is untrue based on all untrue events to make someone else feel better, I believe her; she’s not convincing playing the bad girl, she never has been. Of course, while the considerable majority of this album is around the breakup, a lot of the media noise and social media discourse has surrounded the ‘new love’ side of her connection, where the narrative can feel shakier. There is emotional truth that’s here - ‘imperfect for you’ touches on this, there’s the reality of a passionate rebound from an imploding relationship where you do reckless or stupid shit, ‘supernatural’ touches on this - but it does look a type of way to deliberately make a callback to Brandy & Monica’s chart-topping feud with ‘the boy is mine’ that wants to be salacious but feels more deflective, which is why the imperious ‘yes, and’ directly following it is such an eyeroll gesture. What’s frustrating is that she’s not even wrong: I don’t think it’s anyone’s business whose dick she’s riding, social media playing the form of paparazzi speculating on her relationship is tacky and gross… but the introspection into the new relationship and what it means for her is not at the same level compared to that around the divorce. This is where I feel the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind allusion was done a lot better by Jhene Aiko on Souled Out because it followed the breaking of bad patterns and explored why she was so tentative approaching new relationships - hell, not for nothing, there’s no shortage of country albums by women exploring the messy aftermath of a divorce, with the immediate comparisons coming to mind being The Weight Of These Wings by Miranda Lambert, where she did cheat on Blake Shelton and then explores the meandering lonely thought processes as to why she did - or Rolling Up The Welcome Mat by Kelsea Ballerini, where they had very different expectations in the relationship and it fell apart in dramatic public fashion. What I think it reveals is that Ariana Grande didn’t really give herself the time to be alone and single with her emotions beyond an astrology interlude and a really wise moment of council from her grandmother on the closing track, and that is revealing to me, probably the reason we don’t get more followthrough, and why I understand an audience feeling shortchanged, albeit for different reasons than me.

Of course, the other factor in this is the production and instrumentation, where minus her frequent cowriters Tayla Parx and Victoria Monet, Ariana Grande leans a lot more on Max Martin and ILYA, the latter of whom didn’t work on positions but has been involved on all of her previous albums… and man, I’m not sure that was the right choice for this. For starters, this album is easily her shortest and it feels like her shortest, mostly because it is, by and large, a full on pop record in comparison with the slower R&B cuts which I honestly think eternal sunshine could have used - there’s a considerable amount of heartbreak and angst that could have afforded more space to breathe, where you don’t really get that here. And when you pair that with more muted vocal delivery, the very economical structure of this project creates the impression of hitting benchmarks efficiently, getting in and getting out, quelling any lingering drama… or at worst, damage control. Is that remotely fair? No - I think another real possibility is that the emotions are too raw to be fully explored at this time, but it’s been four years since positions, her longest gap between albums, and your a-list pop stars are not always afforded the luxury of time in a streaming and TikTok economy, made all the worse by not having TikTok for promo this time around! But I can also say this is not top tier from Max Martin in composition or production: his beats that lean on trap like on the self-titled track have always felt weedy and awkwardly mastered, and while as much as I’m increasingly convinced ‘yes, and’ might be the worst possible choice as a mediocre lead-off single and a complete misread of the vibes… at least with its competent throwback house beat and Madonna interpolation on your messy divorce album I can imagine in a boardroom why someone would think it would work. But I’m not wild about the buzzy nu-disco shuffle of ‘bye’, the twinkle around ‘don’t wanna break up again’ has this weirdly chalky quality, the interpolation of ‘the boy is mine’ falls completely flat as it tries to split the difference of three different decades of R&B, and ‘imperfect for you’ attempts psychedelia with that offkey guitar and lumbering groove and stilted vocal line and it’s a total dud - all of these tracks could have used more air or space to flesh out these textures and not feel as shrink-wrapped. And it’s a shame because there are good pop ideas here as well - I really love the smolder in ‘supernatural’ paired with the ethereal vocals, the twinkle of ‘i wish i hated you’ nails the tragedy, and transition between the pulsing synth bass and welling of strings on ‘we can’t be friends’ is really effective. Hell, I’ll even stick up for the warped, bassy punch of ‘true story’ that probably just needed a bit more atmosphere to fully land, and a bit more grandiosity on ‘ordinary things’ could have made it one hell of a closer… but that’s the thing, isn’t it - Max Martin works best with anthemic songs that swing for the fences, where Ariana Grande using him as a composer for hire on smaller, messier songs that demand nuance doesn’t make the best use of him. But she’s comfortable with him, which is also why the sound is no big leap for her - it’s a comfort zone, for better and for worse.

But a whole… look, I don’t want to say this album is bad - I don’t think it is, there’s a floor of quality I can expect with Ariana Grande, it definitely doesn’t have the duds that hold back thank u next for me, and I know I’m still in the minority who thinks that is her worst album. But it does feel like a rushed and intensely compromised album, where the stabs towards messy emotionality and nuance feel hamstrung by a producer who is better equipped for a different mood and writing where you can tell she’s still in the thick of it. It’s tempting to say that if Victoria Monet or Tayla Parx or more R&B writers in general were involved, the album would have leaned more on that genre and that would have given her the grace and space to work through it better… but honestly, I don’t think it would have helped after positions didn’t move the needle the way it should have for a variety of reasons. And I have to wonder if there was industry meddling here, which is relevant to bring up given how major albums like this are constructed. - Ariana Grande has been out of mainstream pop for a few years now, Republic gets antsy for something and catches her at a bad time to get something out and it has to be pop-friendly, and then when it’s a thornier project that’s difficult to promote - her Twelve Carat Toothache, if you want a fellow Republic signee - they go with the obvious interpolation bait, preemptively challenge the critics and drama factories to bait a reaction, and when that doesn’t really hit after pulling the Mariah remix card they throw up their hands because their parent label is locked in a pissing contest with their most valuable source of promo! But again, while this album is compositionally structured for TikTok, its mess doesn’t fit well with that platform’s demographics and proclivities - it’s subdued and trying to be emotionally mature and demands some complexity, which gives me the thought this might age better than some expect. As it is, I think there are just too many elements working at cross-purposes for me to say this fits among her best, but there’s enough quality that I can endorse. And as for Ariana Grande… I don’t think this solves her problems or wipes away the past by any means, but if it does… I hope it’s what she needed.