Ariana Grande's seventh studio album, “eternal sunshine,” dropped on Friday. Turns out, her lead single, the '90s house-pop of “Yes, And?” was a bit of a red herring. She belts across the release. Her idiosyncratic vocal tone stretches across the funky, finger-snapping, shimmery disco of “Bye.
The single — named after a general rule of thumb in improvisational comedy — marked a new musical pivot for the performer. Sure, she was working with one of the greatest pop producers of all time again — the mysterious Swedish powerhouse Max Martin — but now, she was filtering her earworm hooks through ‘90s house music.
There’s also quite a bit of love on this album, for someone navigating life after marriage; the tragic loss of another partner,on her show in Manchester, England in 2017. Instead of leaning into a kind of overt optimism like on past releases — “Thank U, Next,” anyone? — Grande allows herself to feel it all, even when she wishes she couldn’t.
Any missteps are blips — an overly explanative intro and interlude likely included to give the record a kind of “concept album” shape, as Grande has said in interviews, which could’ve been excised.
But the film is a bit more complex than that, something Grande might’ve known for a while now. On Grande’s “eternal sunshine,” various emotional depths and perceptions seem to layer on top one another. Often, she is in love and she is heartbroken, she is self-assured and she is struggling to figure out who she is, she is considering the way public perception has affected her and balking against it, she is Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.
For the listener, it is a treat. Grande has released yet another strong R&B-pop record in which those complications are articulated but now maybe never solved, and with her range front and center. Yes, and it is worth a few listens.
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