After a number of years spent in Oz making, promoting, and campaigning for the Wicked duology, Ariana Grande is fully back in her role as “pop star.” The Oscar nominee is touring the world off of her previous album, Eternal Sunshine, and in the process of putting out another record. Petal is the three-time Grammy winner’s eighth studio album and marks — according to critics, anyway — a darker turn for the former Galinda.
“On the surface, Ariana Grande’s Petal is a sister album to its predecessor, 2024’s Eternal Sunshine — it was made with the same two collaborators, Ilya Salmanzadeh and Max Martin, and it also was entirely written, performed and produced by the three of them,” writes Jem Aswad in Variety. “Usually, that formula means a chapter two: more of the same but different.
“Not this time,” Asward adds. “This sister is darker, moodier and a lot more blunt than Sunshine, and her emotions are more volatile, less heartbroken, and much less internalized. It’s a different Ariana, musically and especially lyrically.”
How that pivot into the dark recesses of fame has materialized on Petal has the critics split. With Grande’s bona fides as a technically masterful singer and adventurous artist taken as a given by most reviewers, the first notices describe as being Petal either too subdued or marking the refreshing return of “F**k It Ari.”
“These rage-fuelled songs are what Grande might have been pointing toward when she described this record as being ‘a little feral,'” writes Aimee Cliff for Pitchfork. “But on the whole, rather than a dramatic departure, petal feels fairly constrained and, occasionally, like a tame reimagining of her older work. Downtempo crooner ‘big feelings’ is like a defanged ‘Dangerous Woman,’ with a hook that doesn’t stand up to so much repetition, and an ending that arrives too abruptly. ‘never get over me,’ with its sassy distorted guitar riff and slow-rolling funk, sounds vaguely as though 2014’s ‘Problem’ was shot with a tranquilizer dart.”
“As usual, Grande’s vocals are lovely and impressively arranged; she can still sing circles, squares and curlicues around most A-list pop stars,” writes Lindsay Zoladz in The New York Times. “But the material here is mostly a morass of sluggish tempos that lacks the charisma and conviction of her best work. The middle of the album is a particular slog, only interrupted by the propulsive, bouncy energy of the penultimate track, ‘Bad Thing (Bunny Hop),’ a dreamy, love-struck bop with obvious hit potential.”
Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone seems to have heard the same record as Cliff and Zoladz, but, in his four-star review, revels at the “more loss and spontaneous” emotionality of Petal.
“She’s shooting from the hip, both musically and emotionally,” he writes. “‘It’s definitely from a place I’ve been maybe too shy or polite to tap into before,’ Grande has said. ‘This kind of just feels like, “F**k it.”‘ (Yeah right, Ariana — nothing says ‘shy’ and ‘polite’ like the louder-than-life pop diva who gave the world ‘Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored.’) But that ‘f**k it’ attitude comes through loud and clear on Petal — and that attitude brings out Ariana Grande at her best.”
