{"id":794800,"date":"2026-07-31T05:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T05:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/794800\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T05:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T05:25:09","slug":"ariana-grande-petal-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/794800\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariana Grande: petal Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ariana Grande<\/a>\u2019s much-scrutinized drift into a higher vocal register in recent years, to hear her tell it, is an act of self-preservation. \u201cIf I have a long day of press or I have to sing, I\u2019ll place [my voice] a little higher,\u201d she explained<\/a> on a podcast in 2025. \u201cThat is just something that\u2019s healthy for the voice.\u201d As one of the most visible pop stars on the planet, she\u2019s become adept at shielding herself: Take the oversized hoodies she frequently wore on pap walks in 2018, which she described as<\/a> reflecting her desire to \u201chide away\u201d as she navigated the overwhelming combined grief of the 2017 terrorist attack on her arena show in Manchester and the death of Mac Miller. Or the way she seemed to continue to perform the peppy, pink-hued role of Glinda off-screen during the back-to-back Wicked press tours in 2024 and 2025. All to say, when it comes to Grande, what seems light and carefree can also be a carefully constructed form of armor.<\/p>\n

Never has that been more apparent than on petal, the star\u2019s eighth studio album and her first to release via her own imprint, BabyDoll Music, as a subsidiary of Republic. The record\u2019s grainy black-and-white cover shows her with her hair\u2014usually scraped back in her trademark ponytail, or lately a bun, another kind of disguise\u2014loose and scattered over her laughing face. The photographic promise of the star in an easy, lighthearted mode is borne out by a clutch of songs that drift by for the most part in that dreamy, gossamer-like higher vocal, more of a whisper than her signature belt. Written almost entirely with one collaborator, Swedish producer Ilya Salmanzadeh (with the exception of hitmaker Max Martin, who graces three tracks) the album has an intimate, experimental feel. But with songwriting that often lacks the urgency and precision of her best, Grande herself feels elusive within it.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Petal picks up the thread of 2024\u2019s eternal sunshine<\/a>, not only in its brushstroke vocals, but in its thematic thread of toxic-relationship songs that act as a Trojan horse for musings on the ultimate toxic relationship of fame. Just as \u201cwe can\u2019t be friends\u201d could scan as either a tortured heartbreak anthem or a kiss-off to a parasocial press, petal\u2019s lead single \u201chate that i made you love me\u201d alludes to shadows on the moon and living as a projection of someone else\u2019s insecurities: Whether that\u2019s the projections of a lover, critics, or someone else entirely is up to us to guess. Like Glinda\u2019s bubble, the song dazzles with its light-refracting synth production, but Grande\u2019s meaning feels slightly at a remove.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s slightly more direct on the prowling title track, where she sings about having to sing about her worst experiences to standing ovations. The lyrics tell a vague yet defiant story (\u201cI am not a victim\/Bitch, I\u2019m practically drowning in my blessings\u201d), punctuated by quaking percussion and a stomping sub-bass. Likewise, the sultry \u201clike i do\u201d is spiked with anger: \u201cAll that shit talk keeps me well-fed,\u201d she sings over a sparse and snarling instrumental. The chorus\u2019 promise that \u201cno one fucks you like I do\u201d might sound like a come-on ripped straight from Positions<\/a>, but here it lands with more threat than sex appeal, making the life of a pop star sound something like a blood pact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ariana Grande\u2019s much-scrutinized drift into a higher vocal register in recent years, to hear her tell it, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[776,88,216,777],"class_list":["post-794800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}