Ariana Grande Petal arrives as a sharper break from Eternal Sunshine. Ariana Grande says she wrote from “unfiltered rage,” while the review calls the album darker, moodier, and more blunt.
Grande also said, “I think [fans] will feel familiarity and comfort in it.” That line sits beside her own description of the project as “very experimental and different for me,” which gives the release its central contradiction: comfort on the surface, volatility underneath.
Grande and three collaborators
Petal was made entirely by Grande, Ilya Salmanzadeh, and Max Martin. The review says Grande wrote, performed, and produced the album with those three, a tight lineup that keeps the sound contained even as the material moves into stranger territory.
Ilya Salmanzadeh also executive-produced the album with Grande, while Max Martin contributes to just three songs. That split matters inside the record itself: most of Petal appears to lean on Salmanzadeh’s methods, with Martin appearing only in a limited role rather than across the full track list.
The result is still a pop album, but one that moves into weirder musical territory without losing shape. Several songs are built around Salmanzadeh’s malfunctioning-computer synth lines, and the title track pairs a busy, complex melody with a thudding Portishead rhythm so tightly that it sounds like two different songs playing in synch.
NSFW lyrics on Petal
The review says the songs are mostly about vengeance or sex, with one exception, and that the heartbroken but resilient Grande from Eternal Sunshine is largely absent. The quoted lines make that shift plain: “Good luck on your way to hell,” “Pussy so sweet a tear fell from his eye,” and “No one fucks you like I do.”
Grande’s own line, “I usually am too shy to tap into that, and I think this time I didn’t filter as much as I usually do,” is the clearest clue to how she approached the record. The album’s bluntness is not an accident of arrangement; it is the point of the writing.
One song, “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” sounds like the entry point for listeners who want the smoother side of the record. The review calls it beautiful but odd, built on a crinkling synthesizer hook over a spare beat and a haunting setting for Grande’s lush, multitracked vocals.
Hate That I Made You Love Me
“Hate That I Made You Love Me” also carries the album’s most direct commercial logic: it keeps the vocals accessible while still signaling the record’s stranger edges. Grande’s growth as a melodicist is on full display there, which gives Petal a foothold even as the rest of the album pushes toward more volatile and less internalized material than Eternal Sunshine.
The open question now is which three songs belong to Max Martin, because the review says only that he appears on three tracks and does not name them. For listeners and industry watchers, that leaves Petal with a clear creative identity and one unresolved production map.
