The new Ariana Grande era – marked by her seventh studio album and first in nearly four years, “eternal sun”, began with a question – “Yes, and?”
The single – named after the general rule in improvisational comedy – marked a new musical center for the artist. Sure, she was once again working with one of the greatest pop producers of all time – the mysterious Swedish powerhouse Max Martin – but now she was filtering her hooks through ’90s house music. The bridge has echoes of “Vogue” (not unlike “Break My Soul” by Beyoncé ) and its lyrics recall a kind of empowerment on Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” (example: “Boy, come on, put on your lipstick/No one can tell you nothing”) while offering a public defense of tabloid representation (“No comment on my body, don’t respond.”) It’s a great song, but it doesn’t feature Grande’s signature performances; there is no larger-than-life vocal moment by which her listeners know her. In some ways it does “Yes and?” a bit of a red herring on the “eternal sun”.
The belt she does throughout the release – her idiosyncratic vocal tone stretches across the funky, toe-snapping, shimmering disco of ‘Bye’. There’s her breathy falsetto on “Don’t Wanna Break Up” (sung with “I’m too much to you/ So I really have to do the thing I don’t want to do,” a reminder that this is her first album since her divorce from real estate agent Dalton Gomez ), the pop of “Supernatural” and the wobbly R&B pop of 2000’s “True Story” as a long-lost version of Destiny’s Child. In the latter, her guns are up again: “I’ll play any part you want,” she sings. “And I’ll be good at it too.”
There’s a Y2K revival of sorts here, done in a different Grande way—and at least partially inspired by her girl-inspired song “Fantasize,” which leaked on TikTok last summer. This is evident in Brandy and Monica’s classic reimagining of “The Boy Is Mine” with a dramatic change of pace.
For a record, completed in about three and a half months – especially since she finished filming “Wicked,” as she told her fans long ago, that was the plan—there’s marked innovation and evolution here. “Imperfect for you” is another slight genre changer, with its distorted synths that sound like an out-of-tune guitar over a blues trap beat. And there’s big Robin-esque Euro-pop production on “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” that explodes into a string crescendo, electronic sounds effortlessly blending with organic.
There’s also a lot of love on this album for someone navigating life after marriage; the tragic loss of another partner, rapper Mac Miller, died of an accidental overdose; and the terrorist attack at her show in Manchester, England in 2017. Instead of leaning into some overt optimism like previous releases – “Thanks, next,” anyone? — Grande lets herself feel everything, even when she wishes she couldn’t.
All the missteps are omissions – an over-explanatory intro and interlude that were probably included to give the record a “concept album” shape, as Grande has said in interviews, that could have been cut. The controversy, of course, is that seeming honesty has always been a highlight of Grande’s albums: as in the closer “Ordinary Things,” which features a recording of her grandmother (and credit: “featuring Nonna.”)
Grande, a lifelong and well-documented fan of Jim Carrey, dropped her album title from 2004 rom-com “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” which focuses on the impossibility of erasing a relationship through the selective removal of memories. In the years since, the film has become a dorm cult classic and, in the age of feminist blogs, has been criticized for its apparent perpetuation of the “manic pixie dream girl” stereotype (in the form of Kate Winslet’s Clementine Kruczynski), where the male protagonist fails to sees the complexity of a woman as a whole person and rather focuses on her particularities and the ways in which she can “fix” him.
But the film is a bit more complicated than that, something Grande may have known for some time. On Grande’s “eternal sun,” different emotional depths and perceptions seem to be layered on top of each other. She’s often in love and heartbroken, she’s self-confident and struggling to figure out who she is, she’s considering how public perception has affected her and resisting, she’s Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.
For the listener it is a pleasure. Grande has delivered another strong R&B-pop record in which those complications are articulated, but now perhaps never resolved, and with her range front and center. Yes, and it’s worth a few listens.
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