Recommendations of the Editorial team
Gathered in 2023 Ariana Grande her team at Republic Records to give them ““Eternal Sunshine” – the album she created when the Hollywood strikes brought production of “Wicked” to a screeching halt. While presenting the record, she cried; she described her as vulnerable and playing with the expectations that are so often projected onto her. In a new Instagram video, Grande calls the same group back to the same studio. “Surprise,” she says as she tells them “Petal” presents – their upcoming eighth studio album, which will be released on July 31st.
“Vulnerable” was an apt attribute for “Eternal Sunshine”which showed Grande in an introspective mode as she dissects her emotional state and understanding of love. For “Petal” she finds a sharper description: “It’s a little wild.” Grande goes on to explain that the record came from a part of her personality that had been lying dormant for a while. “It definitely comes from a place that maybe I was too shy or too polite to tap into before,” she says. “It just feels like: Fuck it.”
Since announcing the album on April 28, Grande has given few hints about where she might be headed sonically or conceptually. At the time, she described it as “something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold, hard and challenging.” She also used this exact sentence in the label meeting – but then she let more things leak out, as the video shows.
Let go of negative attachments
“It was kind of about separating myself from all sorts of negative attachments – be it my own demons in my head, outside voices, things that no longer serve me,” she continued. “It was a writing experiment for me to use that as a template so that I could talk about a thing and share something – and people can use it however they want and apply it to their own lives.”
In January, Grande joked that she would need “an extra brain and four more arms” to do so “Eternal Sunshine” to make another album. At the time, she was still deep in GlindaLand and attending the awards season events for “Wicked: For Good.” But now that she’s said goodbye to the figure she’s spent her life waiting for, Grande is ready to get back to music.
