{"id":570941,"date":"2026-08-01T23:07:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T23:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/570941\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T23:07:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T23:07:17","slug":"ariana-grande-petal-album-review-she-trades-sunshine-for-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/570941\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariana Grande ‘Petal’ album review: She trades sunshine for shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who pissed off Ariana Grande? Well, who didn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

On her new album, \u201cPetal,\u201d the pop superstar opens the spigot on what she\u2019s described as an \u201cunfiltered rage\u201d to blast any number of feckless exes, a prying public obsessed with her body and her personal life \u2014 and not least herself for allowing anyone the power to hurt her in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me who\u2019s to blame \u2014 is it the people or myself?\u201d she wonders against the icy synth stabs of the title track.<\/p>\n

Her answer, delivered as a sneering little aside: \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPetal\u201d marks a dramatic shift from Grande\u2019s previous LP, 2024\u2019s \u201cEternal Sunshine,\u201d a tender and melancholy electro-pop collection that laid out a kind of emotional philosophy of heartbreak. She recorded the new album with the same team \u2014 the hit-making writer-producers Ilya Salmanzadeh and Max Martin \u2014 but here they go for a murkier, more percussive sound to match Grande\u2019s dark mood.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Tolling electric guitar accompanies her in \u201cFreak\u201d as she muses on \u201call of the life I\u2019ve been denied,\u201d while \u201cOh Well\u201d puts a jittery U.K. garage beat under her sneering farewell to an unnamed antagonist: \u201cGood luck on your way to hell.\u201d In \u201cHate That I Made You Love Me,\u201d which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 when Grande released it as \u201cPetal\u2019s\u201d lead single, she sings, \u201cI\u2019ve held your projections when you\u2019ve felt so insecure,\u201d over a trudging groove that moves like a funeral march.<\/p>\n

These downcast observations arrive at what would seem to be a professional high point for Grande, who recently wrapped her extended stay in the \u201cWicked\u201d-verse and who\u2019s in the middle of a tour<\/a> that\u2019s drawn adoring fans to arenas across the country.<\/p>\n

But perhaps that\u2019s the point: Almost every song on \u201cPetal\u201d can be interpreted two ways \u2014 as a story about a broken relationship between two people or as a tale about the toxic connection between an idol and her audience. (More than once did this record make me think about Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cMy pain is music \u2014 do you hear me everywhere?\u201d Grande asks in \u201cWarning Signs (Interlude),\u201d which climaxes with a pithy diagnosis of pop stardom in the parasocial age: \u201cYou don\u2019t deserve me \/ You know you don\u2019t, you never have \/ But I want you to feel me \/ I wish someone could hear me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Complaints about celebrity can be pretty tedious, of course; sometimes it feels as though famous pop singers have forgotten how to write about anything other than life in the social-media fishbowl.<\/p>\n

Yet \u201cPetal\u201d gets some creative traction from how Grande chooses to use her voice; instead of belting, she rarely rises above a whisper, which gives a spooky, slightly creepy quality to her thoughts on being endlessly scrutinized. The airiness of her singing provides some comedy too in a hard-edged song such as \u201cLike I Do,\u201d where after noting that \u201call that s\u2014 talk keeps me well-fed,\u201d she tells whoever needs to hear it, \u201cNo one f\u2014 you like I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having gotten all this off her chest, Grande finishes the album by allowing in some light: Over a zippy new wave arrangement, \u201cBad Thing (Bunny Hop)\u201d ponders the renewing energy of a fresh romance \u2014 or maybe a rekindled old one \u2014 while the glistening \u201cNowhere, Nobody\u201d has her taking deep breaths with a lover she\u2019s convinced might finally give her what she needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cConvinced\u201d is probably the wrong word.<\/p>\n

\u201cHard to believe in a perfect ending,\u201d she admits, \u201cBut that\u2019s all right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who pissed off Ariana Grande? Well, who didn\u2019t? On her new album, \u201cPetal,\u201d the pop superstar opens the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[148762,137844,3050,258110,146,13258,85,46,409,13255,1266,42662,216926,30476,2702,36014,258112,258111,2028],"class_list":["post-570941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-album-review","tag-arena","tag-ariana-grande","tag-emotional-philosophy","tag-entertainment","tag-fan","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music","tag-new-album","tag-people","tag-personal-life","tag-petal","tag-shadow","tag-song","tag-sunshine","tag-tale","tag-toxic-connection","tag-way"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}