Ariana Grande’s petal review: Blissed out brilliance in full bloom – and boundaries firmly drawn 

A shimmering, cascading beauty unfurls on ‘kiss me’, the opener on Ariana Grande‘s new album, petal, before a strange chittering, like the oncoming of intrusive thoughts, causes it to crash out. It’s an interruption so brutal we had to check our advance stream for defects. 

After a moment’s silence, the cosmic splendour returns – all startling bombast and groundswells of emotion. Listening to it, one’s mind is filled with admiration for this woman’s endurance, her seeking of grace, in the face of unimaginable obstacles. (Note: at 39 seconds in, we were already overwhelmed, and this century’s greatest vocalist was yet to utter a note.)

petal’s pristine production and offbeat tone was heralded by the languid curveball of lead single ‘hate that I made you love me’ back in April. That song’s compelling improbability – the cranked up water droplet sounds, the casual defiance of its message (“I will find my way from you, like flowers from a tomb,” she tells an ex, before musing on the cultural sickness that is fame: “Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts on your own accord?”) generated a mixed critical reception, yet proved a streaming force as per. 

Despite the delicacy of its name, petal’s title track is even more abrasive. The stabbing of dissonant piano notes land like jump scares; a post-chorus tempo change discombobulates, as do the thudding synths, echoed later in ‘like I do’. 

“Bitch, I’m practically drowning in my blessings,” Ariana warns, drawing a vital, Chappell Roan-adjacent boundary. As she bubbles into a higher, ever-tenser register, she laments, as if parodying a nursery rhyme: “It’s such a fucked situation, petal in the pavement.” You can imagine her penning that lyric after that breathtakingly disrespectful fan interaction in Singapore last year.

The 33-year-old has described her eighth studio album as “full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.” This proves creatively fertile ground indeed, but for all the “unfiltered rage” (“you don’t deserve me,” she sings at one point, at which point her voice is processed and warped into oblivion) the most palpable emotion is deep sadness. This is a gift: with the state of the world as it is, processing one’s despair with someone as brave in their vulnerability as Ari takes you to transcendent places. 

The most blissful song is the aforementioned ‘kiss me’, the star’s tranquil, honeyed tones poured over minimal percussion and one of her most sublime melodies yet. “Society desperate for remedy, empathy, fix this reality,” she appeals with enough warmth to neutralise fears of the alt-right’s new buzzword, ‘suicidal empathy’, at least for the duration of the song. Elsewhere, ‘freak’ features some of her richest, most restrained singing ever, perfectly offset by Lynchian melancholy and a hint of grunge in the guitar. “I won’t give you your fantasy this time,” she explains; perhaps the mission statement of the album.

Despite the skittish danceability of ‘oh well’ and ‘bad thing (bunny hop)’ flirting with banger status, the blockbuster big pop energy of yore is mostly on ice – perhaps the aggressively commercial high camp of Wicked put paid to that – and a current of gentle prettiness, à la ‘twilight zone’ and ‘we can’t be friends (wait for your love)’, prevails. 

The unabashed silliness of ‘Side to Side’ and ‘7 rings’ is, of course, a distant memory. Even Ari’s straightforward song titles, usually so playful in their punctuation, betray a certain seriousness. (Although she maintains a penchant for lowercase typography.) But look at Madonna, who always returns to the euphoria of the dancefloor, even after the introspection of Erotica, the delicacy of Something to Remember, and the anger of American Life. Where Ari goes from here is anyone’s guess, and as one of our greatest pops stars, capable of both fun and profundity, that unpredictability is part of thrill.

petal is out now