RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Like flowers from a tomb, Ariana Grande ‘s new album has found its way to us.
Led by her 10th Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single, “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” Petal — the eighth studio album from the Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated superstar — arrives a little over halfway through her ongoing, arena-headlining Eternal Sunshine Tour .
With Grande handling lyrics by her lonesome and co-executive producing alongside longtime collaborator Ilya, Petal finds the pop juggernaut shape-shifting into a darker, more guitar-driven sound that builds on the ethereal glimmer of 2024’s Eternal Sunshine and its 2025 Brighter Days Ahead deluxe tracks. After spending her last record processing the dissolution of her marriage and the subsequent emergence of a new love, Grande uses Petal to survey the two years since Eternal Sunshine — and it’s pretty much a manicured middle finger aimed directly at the public.
From her hair and weight to her romantic life and vocal preservation techniques, Grande is constantly at the center of vicious public discourse. Things came to a head during the unfairly derailed Wicked: For Good press run, with heaps of misogyny (specifically misogynoir in the case of co-star Cynthia Erivo), feigned concern from armchair medical experts and an unwarranted nitpicking of Grande’s mere existence doing their best to define the final month of a key chapter of her career.
Petal finds Grande not just directly addressing the precarious relationship between her celebrity and person — as she so deftly does on the excellent title track — but also celebrating the first signs of new life born out of particularly volatile periods like 2025. Some of that new life (petals in the pavement, if you will) looks like a rejuvenated perspective on privacy, maturation and the beautiful unknown of the path not chosen (“Freak”), and other parts of that new life are anchored by a sense of self that’s stronger than ever because it embraces and cherishes all of its past iterations (“Never Get Over Me”).
Fans of Dangerous Woman and Thank U, Next will feel right at home with Petal , as the 12-track set effortlessly balances straightforward pop bangers (“Stay”) with quippy, candid songwriting (“Oh Well”). Intro track “Kiss Me” helps establish an undertone of shoegaze that courses through nearly every track, including moodier garage-indebted moments like “Nowhere, Nobody” and the rollicking pop-rock energy of “Bad Thing (Bunny Hop),” a spiritual successor to “The Boy Is Mine.” Where earlier albums had moments that felt as though Grande was acting out a caricature of her pop persona; Petal seems to emerge from somewhere much more grounded, which allows Grande to sneak in meaningful personal revelations in between genuinely hilarious digs.
But that’s not to say Positions fans don’t get some love, too. “Big Feelings” is another instant standout thanks to its sultry R&B groove, and “Like I Do” recalls the dramatic darkness of mixtape-era The Weeknd. Petal somehow simultaneously sounds like nothing Grande’s ever made before while still clearly nodding to virtually all seven of her other studio albums — and that’s what she’s been trying to get across ever since she sang, “Cause I’m still the same, but only entirely different” on “Hampstead” last year. And for what it’s worth, if you missed the questionable-yet-charming enunciation of pre- Wicked Grande, you’ll be all set with Petal .
Even when her immaculate tone and sense of melody are the only saving grace for, at times, underdeveloped lyrics, Grande fully commits to the concept of Petal ; her vocal performances brim with ever-so-slightly reserved hope that stands on a foundation of trauma-induced survival mode. But she’s also angry here — far past annoyed and almost downright irate — and rightfully taking up the space to get snarky. Where Eternal Sunshine felt warm, Petal is really, really cold. Grande’s no damsel, and that tenacity is what continues to make her such a compelling pop star and artist. This is also an album clearly crafted to be performed live — perhaps more so than any of her previous LPs — which makes the era’s future all the more exciting.
Petal marks the official follow-up to Eternal Sunshine , Grande’s seventh studio album, which spent three weeks atop the Billboard 200 , spawning two Hot 100 chart-toppers in “Yes, And?” and “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” and winning the 2025 MTV Video Music Award for video of the year for her Christian Breslauer-helmed Brighter Days Ahead short film.
Check out Billboard’s preliminary ranking of every track on Ariana Grande’s Petal below.
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