Ariana Grande: petal Album Review

Ariana Grande’s much-scrutinized drift into a higher vocal register in recent years, to hear her tell it, is an act of self-preservation. “If I have a long day of press or I have to sing, I’ll place [my voice] a little higher,” she explained on a podcast in 2025. “That is just something that’s healthy for the voice.” As one of the most visible pop stars on the planet, she’s become adept at shielding herself: Take the oversized hoodies she frequently wore on pap walks in 2018, which she described as reflecting her desire to “hide away” as she navigated the overwhelming combined grief of the 2017 terrorist attack on her arena show in Manchester and the death of Mac Miller. Or the way she seemed to continue to perform the peppy, pink-hued role of Glinda off-screen during the back-to-back Wicked press tours in 2024 and 2025. All to say, when it comes to Grande, what seems light and carefree can also be a carefully constructed form of armor.

Never has that been more apparent than on petal, the star’s eighth studio album and her first to release via her own imprint, BabyDoll Music, as a subsidiary of Republic. The record’s grainy black-and-white cover shows her with her hair—usually scraped back in her trademark ponytail, or lately a bun, another kind of disguise—loose and scattered over her laughing face. The photographic promise of the star in an easy, lighthearted mode is borne out by a clutch of songs that drift by for the most part in that dreamy, gossamer-like higher vocal, more of a whisper than her signature belt. Written almost entirely with one collaborator, Swedish producer Ilya Salmanzadeh (with the exception of hitmaker Max Martin, who graces three tracks) the album has an intimate, experimental feel. But with songwriting that often lacks the urgency and precision of her best, Grande herself feels elusive within it.

Petal picks up the thread of 2024’s eternal sunshine, not only in its brushstroke vocals, but in its thematic thread of toxic-relationship songs that act as a Trojan horse for musings on the ultimate toxic relationship of fame. Just as “we can’t be friends” could scan as either a tortured heartbreak anthem or a kiss-off to a parasocial press, petal’s lead single “hate that i made you love me” alludes to shadows on the moon and living as a projection of someone else’s insecurities: Whether that’s the projections of a lover, critics, or someone else entirely is up to us to guess. Like Glinda’s bubble, the song dazzles with its light-refracting synth production, but Grande’s meaning feels slightly at a remove.

She’s slightly more direct on the prowling title track, where she sings about having to sing about her worst experiences to standing ovations. The lyrics tell a vague yet defiant story (“I am not a victim/Bitch, I’m practically drowning in my blessings”), punctuated by quaking percussion and a stomping sub-bass. Likewise, the sultry “like i do” is spiked with anger: “All that shit talk keeps me well-fed,” she sings over a sparse and snarling instrumental. The chorus’ promise that “no one fucks you like I do” might sound like a come-on ripped straight from Positions, but here it lands with more threat than sex appeal, making the life of a pop star sound something like a blood pact.