Ariana Grande, Eternal Sunshine, review: pop at its sexiest
Pop music is a ruthless industry – it lures in beautiful young things with promises of shiny awards, mansions and sold-out stadium tours, then chews them up and spits them onto the rubbish heap of has-beens if they don’t make enough cash.
No pipeline is crueller than that of the child star-to-popstar: for every Disney success story – your Olivia Rodrigo’s and Miley Cyrus’s – you have those plagued by mental illness (Demi Lovato) or addiction issues (Britney Spears). Over on rival channel Nickelodeon, nobody suspected that Ariana Grande (a mere supporting character in tween sitcom Victorious) would be their breakout star.
But six albums later, Grande’s powerhouse vocals (she possesses a rare four-octave vocal range and whistle register) and chameleonic ability to fuse RnB, electronica and retro-pop have made her one of pop’s biggest players.
Eternal Sunshine, the Floridian singer’s seventh offering – her first in four years – contains more of the same slickly-produced dancefloor-fillers. Lead single Yes, And? responds to criticisms of her relationship with actor Ethan Slater (“Why do you care so much whose d–k I ride?” she asks those whispering online that their respective marriages, uh, overlapped). Moral judgement aside, it’s a banger: co-produced with Max Martin, the Swedish mastermind behind Taylor Swift’s 1989, Grande brings the house-backed hedonism of Madonna’s Vogue firmly into the internet age.
We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love) continues her love of Scandi-style electronica – displayed previously on One Last Time and Rain On Me, with Lady Gaga – while Don’t Wanna Break Up Again sounds like a fresh spin on Nelly and Kelly Rowland’s 2002 smash Dilemma. Meanwhile, The Boy is Mine, a silky ode to love and lust, more than holds its own against Brandy and Monica’s 1998 earworm of the same name.
For those unfamiliar with Grande’s music, her breathy, high-pitched (almost juvenile) delivery can grate when coupled with her overtly sexual lyrics. But here is an artist who has grown up under scrutiny – her sex life the subject of countless articles – and has simply stopped giving a damn.
Tragedy has also cast a shadow over Grande’s success. On 22 May 2017, 22 people were killed at her concert in Manchester by suicide bomber Salman Abedi. One week later, Grande returned to the city to host the One Love benefit concert, raising ￡10 million in donations for victims and their families. Then, the following September, her ex-boyfriend, the rapper Mac Miller, was found dead from an accidental overdose.
She’s sensitively addressed both losses before: Manchester on No Tears Left to Cry and Get Well Soon, and Miller on 2019’s self-empowerment anthem Thank U, Next (“Wish I could say thank you to Malcolm / ‘Cause he was an angel”). Although grief isn’t a focus of Eternal Sunshine, her forced-maturity is evident in every note.
At the tender age of 30, Grande has won two Grammys, a Brit and dozens of other musical awards; she holds a staggering 35 Guinness World Records (covering everything from Number One records to Spotify streams); and, later this year, she will play Glinda in Universal’s adaptation of Broadway musical Wicked.
She’s so crazily successful that she could release an album of gibberish and it would still top the charts. Thankfully, Eternal Sunshine is pop at its sexiest – 13 songs designed to lodge themselves in your head for eternity, whether you like it or not.