On the surface, Ariana Grande’s “Petal” is a sister album to its predecessor, 2024’s “Eternal Sunshine” — it was made with the same two collaborators, Ilya Salmanzadeh and Max Martin, and it also was entirely written, performed and produced by the three of them. Usually, that formula means a chapter two: more of the same but different.
Not this time. This sister is darker, moodier and a lot more blunt than “Sunshine,” and her emotions are more volatile, less heartbroken, and much less internalized. It’s a different Ariana, musically and especially lyrically.
Grande braced her fans for a change in a widely circulated interview earlier this week. “I think [fans] will feel familiarity and comfort in it,” she said of the album. “Yet at the same time it’s very experimental and different for me, and also I wrote from a place that I don’t usually, which is unfiltered rage,” she laughed. “I usually am too shy to tap into that, and I think this time I didn’t filter as much as I usually do.”
“This is rage?,” some may think at first listen, because it’s still a pop album, even though it moves into weirder territory musically than she has in the past. And let’s be real: With her pretty, pristine soprano, it’s hard to imagine what an Angry Ari (“AngRI”?) would sound like. But lurking below the shiny surface of many of the songs are lyrics like:
