Ariana Grande’s petal Never Fully Blooms: Review

Ariana Grande knows how cruel the world can be. “Society desperate for remedy/ Empathy, fix this reality,” she declares on “kiss me,” the sprawling opener of her eight studio album, petal. It’s no surprise Grande adopted this philosophy – love as the cure for a rotting world – given everything she’s been through: most notably, a terrorist attack during the “Dangerous Woman Tour” in 2017 and the death of her long-term partner, rapper Mac Miller, a year and some change later. More recently, she’s experienced scrutiny from a parasocial public, with many questioning her dalliances with various Wicked co-stars and taking issue – or concern (if you can even call it that) – with her increasingly gaunt appearance. That’s a lot for one person to handle. But, in true pop star fashion, Grande uses her greatest gift – music – to nurse her wounds. Her last effort, the celestial eternal sunshine, saw Grande deploy her post-Sweetener blend of lo-fi R&B and pop to express her woes. Now, her sadness has hardened to “an unfiltered rage.” On petal, Grande triangulates grievances with her celebrity, the press, and lovers past, all while proving she’s still got a few more stylistic circles to square. She’s admittedly gone a bit “feral,” and her newfound experimentation is surprisingly ear-catching, though at times disappointingly pussyfooted, especially when paired with clumsy lyricism. Find Last-Minute Arian Grande Tickets Here Take that opener, “kiss me,” whose clunky percussive hits and distorted synth crashes make the perfect apocalypse-now type atmosphere for Grande to get all existential over. That same abrasiveness is found on “petal,” a progressive-waltz whose time changes mirror its lyrical ambivalence. Here, she questions the age old notion that great art can only come from suffering. (“Take your broken heart, make it into art,” as the late Carrie Fisher said). “Long as she gets the ovation each night/ Heartbreak won’t bitе, this is paradise,” Grande sings. It’s a delicate balance every artist faces, one Grande has become accustomed to. At what point does offering up the most intimate, vulnerable parts of oneself to a hungry audience become too heavy a burden to bear? Is the solution to completely detach as to not feel anything at all? Or to keep pushing the bad feelings down? She explores the latter on the UK garage-tinged “oh well”: “I play all the parts that I’m supposed to, right?/ And I just throw a band-aid on my whole damn life.” In the end, she retraces that earlier philosophy, that love is all she needs. “There’s no more running/ And there’s nowhere with nobody else that I’d rather be,” she sings on album closer “nowhere, nobody,” her deep admiration for Imogen Heap bursting through as her voice turns crystalline in the chorus. Grande kept a tight ensemble of collaborators this go-around. The entire album was co-written and executive produced by herself and Ilya Salmanzadeh. Max Martin was tapped for lead single “hate that i made you love me” and two other tracks, but petal presents a largely singular Grande. (It was even her first album to be released through her own imprint label, Babydoll Music, a subsidiary of Republic Records.) The lack of outside voices gave Grande the creative clearance to go “fuck it” and explore arenas she was “too shy or polite to tap into before.” The autobiography works best when Grande just talks her shit. She harnesses a Positions-era horniness at times, like when she brags that her nether regions possess enough power to make a grown man cry on “big feelings,” a track that deserves a better melody and metaphor than its title, or just how unforgettable those same nether regions are on “never get over me,” the type of R&B/pop romp Grande could conjure in her sleep. Other times, though, Grande’s pen is more limited than lucid, so much so that the left-of-center production choices feel like wasted potential. “stay” is so full of lyrical and melodic platitudes that the electronic beeps and bops in the background sound like they got lost on their way to a better track. “like i do” glides with a dirtier iteration of a thank you, next trap beat but is marred with eye-roll inducing one-liners: “my ego small/ but I’m still Grande” (a low-hanging-fruit play on her surname’s proper pronunciation) and “I’m making cents off of your nonsense,” to name a few. To be fair, there is one eye-widening line where Grande boasts being a source of inspiration for an ex man’s new girl… whoever that may be. Lead single “hate that i made you love me” continues in the vein of eternal sunshine’s “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” by taking shots at an overbearing press; now, however, the message trumps the medium as Grande employs aimless synth sparks and a tepid drum pattern to lament her relationship with celebrity. Grande sold this album as angrier and darker than her past work. Though her lyrics glean something weightier, her waifish vocal performance makes the aforementioned “unfiltered rage” hard to buy. “warning signs (interlude)” broods as Grande laments a lover (or audience?) who ignores her pleading cries. The eery, electronic production crescendos, but Grande’s voice remains static until the very end when her voice, too, turns computerized – but only for a second. Even when she’s not selling anger, Grande’s voice leaves much to be desired, and it’s quite a shame since she’s shown her expansive vocal capabilities many times before. It’s especially unfortunate on “bad thing (bunny hop),” an Olivia Rodrigo-style track that chronicles the early push and pull of a messy attraction. It would’ve been better bought if Grande’s voice wasn’t drowned out by the pop-rock production. Perhaps in this latest evolution of Ariana Grande, the pop star has found strength in softness. She dons a notably lighter voice as an act of vocal preservation, utilizing it even to shut down the discourse about her body. It’s that quiet authority that permeates the high points of petal. She’s not reinventing any sort of wheel, nor has she marked a benchmark in her pop canon. What she has done, however, is plant creative seeds that could be paths to new sonic landscapes should she let them bloom. Most importantly, Grande has given us a glimpse into how she’s feeling now and the type of whispery yet grounded presence she prefers, one that’s brave enough – and vulnerable enough – to use petals for armor. Stream Ariana Grande’s Petals in Hi-Res Qobuz