Album Review: Ariana Grande’s ‘Petal’

Anyone whothat loves Ariana Grande knows that petal is a sonic and thematic natural evolution, and is actually not as outlandish as it might be perceived to be. A sound so distinctive, this body of work solidifies itself as the most representative and self-realised expression of Grande’s timeless discography.   

I listened to petal hours after its release, as soon as I woke up here in the UK - it’s a ritual I follow with all of her records. In my passive listening, my heart and ears instinctively found their favourites. 

This record is remarkable for a number of reasons. As a work, petal is adorned by the gemstones of ‘successful pop’: the technical complexities of an Imogen Heap, the millennial infatuation we hear in the crescendos of The Weeknd’s best tracks, and dare I say, the otherworldly unsettledness, packed full of minor keys - best exercised in the records of none other than Lana Del Rey. We even hear a little bit of The Neighbourhood on ‘bad thing (bunny hop)’, and a bit of Bicep on ‘oh well’. Don’t mistake these nods for an artist ‘borrowing’ sounds from others though - petal is entirely its own entity, and its individuality is embedded in full circle moments that took me right back to the earlier successes of Grande’s discography, giving us the same sensations we once had from songs like ‘Daydreamin’ and ‘Best Mistake’. 

This album is much more about the ‘self’ than it is about any external forces, and Grande’s lens on topics dances between perturbed and entirely surrendered, making it a profound commentary on endurance and acceptance, magnified by a cinematic quality, such as on tracks like ‘kiss me’ (which is AMAZING!). It’s a slight thematic departure from eternal sunshine, which centres struggles with fame, divorce and eternal love. On petal, Grande’s force is kinetic, and we move past this assortment of painful memories with her (those memories being the concrete pavement), and enter a new kind of receptivity (the petal growing out of the pavement). It’s an inspirational record, and I can’t stop listening. 

The album opens with one of my favourite tracks, the gorgeous ‘kiss me’. The exact embodiment of its title, this song lands on the ear like a shooting star. Grande has lightly dabbled with rock here and there, which makes this clearer commitment to the genre so satisfying. ‘kiss me’ is entirely about living in the moment - there’s not enough empathy going around and not feeling like you belong, coexisting with an existential ‘kiss me like you know this is goodbye’ and ‘grab me like my life is on the line’. Though it introduces itself gleefully, as we move through the tracks on ‘Petal’ and listen carefully to the lyrics, we come to realise that it’s a bit of a dichotomy, a conundrum that is both violently compelling (‘hate that i made you love me’), and elegant and moody (‘like i do’), a combined thematic through line we’ve seen in much of Ariana’s discography. 

‘Petal,’ the title track,  moves between a steady pulse and firm downbeats, but keeps the loose architecture of a Swing, which Grande has historically shown her love for. On this track, Grande’s lived experience feels like a loop, a ‘record in rotation,’ and though she feels that her lived experiences are ‘such a fucked situation,’ she continues to march on through its tribulations. On ‘stay’ (another one of my favourites), a xylophone meets a kaleidoscope of colours, creating a synthy, warm kind of wonderfulness, and reminds me of Frou Frou’s ‘Flicks’. ‘stay’ is lyrically similar to ‘warm’ (eternal sunshine), and made me think about the wider puzzle of themes that emerge in Grande’s music. Grande is an abnormally clear visionary. She creates a kind of harmonious ‘puzzle’, and in ‘petal’, the centrepiece of the puzzle is safety (or lack thereof in all of her relationships). Cutting through the beautiful metaphors, she sings ‘i don’t wanna be just another corrective experience… can you keep me safe this time?’. 

This theme carries straight into the lyrics of ‘oh well’ where Grande sings  ‘good things can replace dysfunction, obsession, thanks but i’ll see you right out’. An intense self-reliance makes Grande feel like she’s ‘a thousand light years ahead’, a heart burdened and grown out of grief. We get a textured switch-up on ‘big feelings’ and ‘never get over me,’ which feel inspired by frequent collaborator and fellow artist, Victoria Monet. Cosy chords paired with flirty pacing remind us both of a Positions era Grande and other combinations that we first heard on records like My Everything and Yours Truly. 

I’ve got to give a moment to ‘freak’, which is my second favourite track on the album (bar the interlude). Hauntingly beautiful, ‘freak’, like others, extracts themes of fearless independence and disobedience from its predecessor eternal sunshine, like blood being drawn out, slowly. Here, Grande is ‘flying way too over’, and seams are bursting, meaning a bloom is near. This eases into ‘warning signs (interlude)’ - my favourite track on this album (yes, shockingly, an interlude). This is everything I’d want packed into 1 minute and 17 seconds. It’s melancholic, sickly, anecdotal, and overly nostalgic; ‘your favourite muse simply disappears’ on this track, and it humanises Grande in uncomfortable, odd, meta visions, ‘my voice plays in a taxi passing by’. Staying on that central theme of petal, in this interlude is a dying flower, a love that is trapped and suffocated, like a caged bird, ‘but i want you to feel me / i wish someone could hear me’. 

On ‘like i do’, Grande’s Dangerous Woman alter ego makes a fierce comeback, a masochistic, sexy tango that speaks to the negative symptoms of fame; she sings ‘i’m making cents off of your nonsense / all that shit talk keeps me well fed’. The album begins to close with the fun and brilliantly pop-ish ‘bad thing’, and finally ends with the unresolved, complex ‘nowhere, nobody’. It’s no surprise that this theme of the unknown is still so central to Grande’s work, having publicly lived through a tremendous amount of grief and trauma, and one of the most prolific female pop careers we’ve seen. I’d also like to add, Grande is (and always has been) a student first, and it shows. petal is (like all of her works) an intentional, artful defiance of what we think or expect ‘Ariana Grande’ to sound like. Hats off to her, as always. Hand in hand with inimitable talent is a listening experience that never gets tired. 

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