Now eight albums in, Ariana Grande has the skill of “mining her life for her art” down to a science. And yet, with Petal, something feels decidedly different from some of her previous most personal works (including Thank U, Next and Eternal Sunshine). It isn’t just the moodier sonic landscape (which comes courtesy of co-producers Max Martin and ILYA) either. No, even in the lyrics themselves Grande is tapping into something darker. And yes, to this point, there’s more than a hint of The Weeknd’s vibe in what she’s doing (which makes sense—after all, the two have collaborated a few times). And maybe that’s because, as Grande told Apple Music, “I wrote from a place that I don’t usually, which was like an unfiltered rage that I think we all feel sometimes. I usually am too shy to tap into that, and I think this time I kind of just didn’t filter as much as I usually do.”
Though to be fair, “rage” in Grande’s hands isn’t exactly, you know, like at a Kittie level or anything. Even so, the first line of the album, “Society desperate for remedy,” makes some of that rage immediately apparent. For it isn’t only directed at fans and critics that often dissect her every relationship and/or fling (and now more than ever, her body—even though she previously demanded on “yes, and?,” “Don’t comment on my body, do not reply”), but also a society that has grown sicker and more sociopathic with each passing year. Something that “Kiss Me” addresses with that aforementioned opening line. The visceral instrumentation that then bursts out from a somewhat dreamy initial opening is separated by a “glitched out” sound effect. Almost as if to indicate that, in Grande’s life, there is a “before” and after” point between every new trauma. Arguably starting with the Manchester Arena bombing during her May 22, 2017 date of the Dangerous Woman Tour (an unfortunate title in a scenario like that). An experience that fundamentally changed her—though never her commitment to empathy. In fact, that tragedy seemed to only deepen it. Which is why she adds, “Empathy, fix this reality” (which is, needless to say, such a Cancer command).
A reality plagued by unfeeling, callous world leaders and a collective rapacious appetite for plundering the environment that all goes back to government and big business being in bed together. Of course, when one is a celebrity of Grande’s magnitude, she herself can’t help but be in bed with big business either. So it is that she pivots away from talk of society’s issues and returns to discussing the thing she delineates best: a doomed relationship. At first, this comes in the form of her alluding to how she has a tendency to throw herself into romance as a means of distraction from herself, declaring, “Gimme something to love/Something just to obsess me/It’s do or die, bring me to life/Kiss me like you know this is goodbye.” And for Grande, more often than not, a goodbye kiss seems inevitable when it comes to the people she passionately throws herself into…at first. Though all the while, she seems to be thinking in the back of her mind, “You know I don’t believe we belong.” Nonetheless, she must also admit, “My heart in your hands despite all of my plans.”
Though, in the end, it’s Grande who has her lover’s heart in her hands—along with everyone else’s. For that is the subject of Petal’s lead single, “Hate That I Made You Love Me.” A track that’s awash in a fatalistic tone of voice, as if Grande is surrendering to her ostensible fate of being like catnip to freakshows. The ones to whom she would tell, “Yeah, I, I hate that made you love me/‘Cause I barely tried” (cue the scene of her licking a donut on the Fourth of July in 2015 and saying, “I hate Americans. I hate America”). As for the men she’s “made” love her, she would slightly revise those lyrics to, “Hate that I made you love me/Sorry if I made me your type.”
Earlier in the song, she also continues a motif from track one, remarking, “Got good at goodbyes” (hence, her previous urging on “Kiss Me,” “Kiss me like you know this is goodbye”). With this particular line, it would be a mistake not to factor in her loss of Mac Miller, just over a year after the Manchester Arena bombing. For, although the pair “only” dated for about two years, they were famously deemed as each other’s “the one.” Even though Grande appeared to want to blow all of that up by letting her relationship with Pete Davidson break about a week after her breakup with Miller went public (Davidson, too, was only freshly out of a relationship with Cazzie David). Thus, establishing the “homewrecker”-type vibe she would perfect with Ethan Slater, which also emulated the pattern of ending one serious relationship and jumping into another (with her divorce from Dalton Gomez only being announced shortly before reports of her dating Slater were confirmed).
And maybe all these acts of “trying different boys on for size,” as she puts it on “Petal”—the third track and second single from the album it takes its name from—are merely a coping mechanism. Much like shopping is on “7 Rings.” And, speaking of, the opening notes to “Petal” recall a certain “7 Rings” sound, which is in keeping with another comment Grande made to Apple Music regarding the creation of this record: “I’ve always been a strange little sponge for different sounds and I’ve always really stuck to what I like. I don’t really like listening to new things.” Later, this will become evident in the decidedly Imogen Heap sound of “Nowhere, Nobody” (Grande fans will of course remember Grande originally immortalizing her love for Heap on Sweetener’s “goodnight n go”). For “Petal” though, the familiar sound is definitely “7 Rings.” But what isn’t as familiar is the candor of Grande opening the song with the verse, “Tryna feel somethin’ real/To cry again/They say the artist needs tears/To write again/‘Cause all of my favorite stories end in some kind of catastrophe.” Almost as if she’s saying she “likes the drama” because it “adds to her creativity.”
Incidentally, Charli XCX offers a similar exploration on “I’m Afraid,” a track from her own recent album, Music, Fashion, Film. On it, she admits that she engages in certain, let’s say, narcissistic and self-indulgent behavior because, “All this pain makes me believe/I’m a better artist now/An excuse I tell myself/To act selfishly.” Grande, too, is committed to her art in such a way, also pronouncing on “Petal,” “But I don’t need someone to save me/‘Cause this music and I will never die.” It’s a sentiment that echoes the self-love/overall therapy session that writing songs and making music provides from “thank u, next,” during which Grande notes, “Plus, I met someone else/We havin’ better discussions/I know they say I move on too fast/But this one gon’ last ‘cause her name is Ari and I’m so good with that.” To be sure, Grande has definitely been on the Carrie Bradshaw journey of realizing, “But the most challenging, exciting and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself.” Though, of course, like Carrie, Grande would also prefer to add the boyfriend-having caveat, “And if you find someone to love the ‘you’ you love, well, that’s just fabulous.”
And so is, in the end, getting paid to “paint endless pictures” through her music. Which is why Grande says she can’t complain and “this is not a cry for help/A couple million for my thoughts/I’ve got plenty/But I am not a victim, bitch.” Again, the correlation between this and “7 Rings” shines through, with the lyrics in the latter also speaking on turning pain into profit with lines like, “Been through some bad shit, I should be a sad bitch/Who woulda thought it’d turn me to a savage?” and “Yeah, my receipts be lookin’ like phone numbers/If it ain’t money, then wrong number.” There’s also a dash of “Monopoly” (the “sister song” of “7 Rings,” if you will), when Grande boasts, “Work so fuckin’ much, need a twinny, twin, twin/You’d be straight for life if I gave you my PIN/Even though we gave up that 90% for the win” (a reference to the royalties that went to Concord, the company that owns Rodgers & Hammerstein’s music catalogue, when Grande and Victoria Monét sampled from The Sound of Music’s “My Favorite Things”). And as Grande continues to find the “blessings” in fame, there’s even hint of Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” when she alludes to herself in the third person with the lines, “Long as she gets the ovation each night/Heartbreak won’t bite/This is paradise/I hear them all say ‘ooh’.”
As they’ll keep saying when the next song, “Stay” (not to be confused with Rihanna’s—or Madonna’s, for that matter), comes on. During which Grande toggles back to talking about romance and how this boy she’s fallen for is “way too good to be true” (surely, she can’t have been talking about Ethan Slater, but yeah, she probably was). Alas, she’s blindsided with being “in like” as she coos, “Wait, baby/Take your time/You got me so in like.” While, of course, Grande has any number of “past loves” she could be referring to, it seems like Ethan Slater, being the “freshest” in her arsenal, could be the inspiration.
This includes Grande telling the erstwhile object of her affection, “I’m falling for you, what do I do?/I just wanna stay this time/Now really I should stay this time.” Unafraid to allude to her history of dipping out on relationships, Grande also addresses her own fear of abandonment that might lead to her being the one to leave before she can be left. This manifested in the verse, “But can you keep me safe this time?/Stay/Hands tied/Hard to reach, but oh my/I don’t wanna be/Just another corrective experience.” Yes, it all has some very Runaway Bride motifs, and if Grande ever makes a video for “Stay,” she would be a fool not to use that movie as part of its narrative (since she’s no stranger to repurposing movies into music videos [with “thank u, next” being the most obvious example]).
The rhythm picks up on “Oh Well,” another track ripe with self-exploration, in addition to Grande getting rid of “things” (read: people) that no longer serve her. And probably never did. At least not mental health-wise. And since Grande’s overarching “signature” for most of her recording career has been to spotlight the importance of mental health and not repressing emotions, it makes sense for her to sweetly sing a chorus that goes, “Good things can replace dysfunction, obsession/Friends I used to need, but now/The bad guys all go to hell/Good things can replace dysfunction, obsession/Thanks, but I’ll see you right out/Good luck on your way to hell/Oh well.”
In another moment of reflecting on relationships past, Grande also makes it seem as if she could be talking to “her public” as much as an ex (in other words “the ‘Hate That I Made You Love Me’ effect”) when she says, “You don’t even know me (no way)/Feel like I’m a thousand light years ahead/But I, I/I play all the parts that I’m supposed to, right?/And I just throw a Band-Aid on my whole damn life.” Aside from having manifold double meanings (including a reference to her literal acting career that even garnered her an Oscar nomination—at least for “Part One” of Wicked), there is a sense of that rage—and frustration—Grande was talking about in terms of letting it all out in her writing process this time around. Of letting out some emotions that have either been dormant for too long, or not expressed quite as succinctly as they could have been on previous albums. Granted, it’s still not exactly “succinct” who she’s addressing when she says, “It sucks because I love you for real/And I want to believe the love I never got is real/So I find it in you/But don’t worry ‘cause you’ll keep getting breakup songs about you.” However, in this case, it could be Dalton Gomez, the only man she ever actually married and the one who inspired the majority of Eternal Sunshine. Then again, her breakup with Ethan Slater is more recent. Which is why he could very well be the one to have prompted Grande to conclude “Oh Well” with the scathing assertion, “I’ll meet my own needs/Though you’ve been trying to/Let’s see who I can be without you.”
The tone becomes more playful on the following track, “Big Feelings,” which certainly has a kind of “Sabrina Carpenter vibe”—you know, on the sexual innuendo front. Though, to be fair, Grande was doing that shtick long before Carpenter, just not to the point where it became “the thing” she was most known for. In any case, the music announces the saucy, sweltering aura of the track from the get-go before Grande delves into the “Dangerous Woman”-esque sexual confidence (with just a dash of “Honeymoon Avenue” “big vocals”) that characterizes “Big Feelings.” So confident is Grande, in fact, that she gets right to the flexing with, “Baby, what’s your karma like?/‘Cause, boy, you must’ve earned me historically.” Her first innuendo then arrives with, “Don’t have to hold it in no more/I’ll take it, babe.”
One will note that, if a song like this were entrusted with Taylor Swift, the result would be catastrophically cringe (as was the case for the now notorious “Wood” from The Life of a Showgirl, an album that proved Max Martin saves his best work for Grande these days). Especially if she dared to say something like, “Pussy so sweet, a tear fell from his eye.” The kind of line that one might imagine Cardi B rapping before they imagined Grande singing it.
The same goes for her oh so evocative bridge (which is also awash [pun intended] in Cancerness thanks to that double entendre mention of water), “I know it can be so hard sometimes for me to stop it/Once you express yourself [more Madonna influence shining through], I can become so aquatic/Come swim in these waters/I’ve been told I’ve healing properties/So, baby, can you promise me/That you’ll handle me properly?” As for the last line, although meant to be “sexy” in this context, it certainly harkens back to what she asks/worries about on “Stay”: “Can you keep me safe this time?” Whether he can or can’t, Grande is still certain, “Yeah, I think I give him/Big feelings/Big feelings.”
Though the song that succeeds it, “Freak” (not to be confused with Lana Del Rey’s), might lead listeners to initially think the “kinky” theme is going to persist, it’s actually a more serious number that perhaps offers the most ever “flower metaphors” of a non-sexual nature. For, in this context, Grande talks flower analogies in terms of growth, assuring of herself and her future, “Someday all the seeds will open/All of the life I’ve been denied of/Will bloom all around, unfrozen.” In the meantime, though, she insists, “I won’t give you your fantasy this time/Can you do it now?/No, I won’t do what you say, freak, any time.” Thus, here again, Grande opts to leave it open-ended for the listener in terms of who she might be speaking to—a current lover, an ex, her fans, her critics, the world at large. Often, it seems like it could be the latter, particularly when she says such things as, “Will them and their poison ever sober?/I don’t know her” (hopefully, she asked Mariah beforehand if she could use one of said chanteuse’s signature catchphrases).
There also seems to be a sonic callback, both musically and intonation-wise, to “Hate That I Made You Love Me” when Grande sings the bridge, “Lost without your light/I can’t leave your side/It’s so peculiar/Won’t you stay a while/Can’t imagine/Life without you in/It’s human nature/So I can’t leave you now.” Yet another instance of the duality of who she’s talking to—maybe even herself, at times. And it’s a testament to how, throughout Grande’s life, it appears as if, between business (work) and pleasure (personal), there’s been nowhere she can go to find a dynamic that didn’t (or doesn’t) ultimately turn toxic. That didn’t somehow start to feel as if whoever was supposed to be “loving” her didn’t just instead start taking the false image they had of Grande and projecting it onto her relentelessly. Only to be disappointed when she couldn’t possibly live up to it. Hence, her vacillating emotions (that are patent throughout Petal). The ones that waver between wanting to be “kept” and “let go.”
A seamless musical segue into “Warning Signs (Interlude)” makes it feel like it’s still a part of “Freak” (and, in a sense, it is) as Grande admits, “Blind half the time/I run through all your warning signs/I wonder why I answer each time/You call me when your numbers slide.” Despite being the shortest track at one minute and seventeen seconds, it has plenty of truth bombs to drop, not least of which is Grande taking back her power by telling this person—this man—“You don’t deserve me/You know you don’t, you never have/But I want you to feel me/I wish someone could hear me.” Seeing as how Grande has dated quite a few men with tattoos that were/are, let’s say, “beneath her station,” it once more leaves the person being addressed open to interpretation and speculation—though, of course, it must be said that Dalton Gomez has plenty of tattoos and is the likelier source of, again, rage on this particular track that leads into “Like I Do.” A more rage-filled track still.
And one that makes its moody angst known from the instant Grande offers up her creepy and unsettling set of “ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah’s” (almost like they’ve been reworked for a horror movie version of The Sound of Music). The music then bursts through in all its The Weeknd-on-After Hours-or-Dawn FM glory as she pronounces, “I’m makin’ friends with my consequence/Way up high like my consciousness.” She then adds, “Keep my heels tall/My ego small/But I’m still Grande [pronounced like ‘Gran-dee,’ for some reason].” Once again showing off her love for double meanings on Petal. And, yes, “Like I Do” is yet another instance that exhibits how Grande’s relationship with the public can mirror a toxic romantic relationship.
This comes across most bluntly when she taunts, “You hate to love me [another callback to ‘Hate That I Made You Love Me’]/Extra, extra/Buy one, take me/Sexy how you come [more innuendo]/To see it’s true/You need me like I you/‘Cause no one fucks you like I do.” Reducing the way she, say, “makes love” to the camera and/or the microphone to “fucking” her public real good only goes to show that she’s just trying to get down on their level of baseness and crassness when it comes to how they treat and “consume” her. In this regard, the track bears plenty of thematic similarities to Britney Spears’ 2007 hit, “Piece of Me.” A single that, in fact, has been influencing more than just Grande of late, for Tinashe also recently released what amounts to her version of it in the form of “Crash Out.”
“Piece of Me”-esque lyrics also come through in Grande’s references to her size, singing, “All that shit talk keeps me well fed/Through thick and thin.” The former phrase meaning that, as she also says before, “I’m making cents off of your nonsense” (her version of Lana Del Rey goading, “Your interest really made stacks out of it for me” on 2021’s “Black Bathing Suit”). And yes, she means well fed “spiritually,” in the bank account sense and literally. Though many would argue to the contrary about that literal well fed-ness. For it’s no secret that people are “concerned” about how emaciated she appears of late. Which is why “through thick and thin” has still another double meaning in this context. For while, conventionally, it means to stay by someone’s side through the good and bad times, here, it’s obviously a nod to all the comments that people make about Grande’s weight. Or, these days, lack thereof. And Spears, too, has a lyric on “Piece of Me” that acknowledges such commentary with, “I’m Mrs. She’s too big now she’s too thin.” In both women’s situations, the appetite (no pun intended) to know more about what’s happening with her weight under the guise of “concern” was followed by an outright desire to see a pop star knocked off her pedestal.
But it’s also clear that, for both women, their public will “Never Get Over Me,” a song that kicks off with a dreamy xylophone intro (almost in the vein of the opening to Mariah’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”) that’s interrupted by an effect that sounds almost like flies or bees buzzing violently onto the scene. Yet another indication of where Grande’s head is at: she can’t seem to get any peace without it being grossly interrupted. She then gets right to the point with, “Boy, you got me fucked up/So crazy now/I’ve been dreamin’ of you/Can you make it come true?”
For the most part, her wish has ostensibly always been any object of her desire’s command. Only for things to come to an abrupt end. Which is why, on this track, Grande seems to be portraying herself as some kind of “Poison Ivy” or Venus flytrap (to make a plant/flower analogy in keeping with the album’s title), warning her suitor, “No, you’ll never get over me, yeah/I feel some type of way [reminding one of her saying, “You got me some type of way” on “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored”]/‘Bout what this could do to you/We should play it safe/‘Cause I don’t wanna burden you with how sweet it is/You’ll be dreaming ‘bout the taste of me/But look, at least you’ll have the memory.”
When the chorus arrives, there’s more than a tinge of her “Dandelion” cadence to it as she invites, “Come slip into something real/And you’ll never get over me/Then somehow every ex disappears/The vision is crystal clear.” Alas, the only thing that’s “crystal clear” throughout Petal is that nothing is crystal clear at all. Including who she’s talking to on “Bad Thing (Bunny Hop).” Though speculation points to Ricky Alvarez—you know, her ex from the 2015-2016 period…and the one who was with her when she licked the donut. Hence, the parenthetical of “Bunny Hop,” which suggests Grande is in on the joke of how she flits about (more than hops around) from one relationship to the next. Though Alvarez marks the first blatant instance of Grande pulling a full-on J. Lo and going back to one of the same people from her dating repertoire.
And maybe because it’s such a “different” (but same) experience for her, that’s why the song is among the most sonically divergent from the other tracks on Petal. Indeed, “Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)” has almost a 1960s garage/surf rock sound. To boot, the Sabrina Carpenter comparisons make themselves known again when Grande asks, “Have you been this fine/The whole damn time?” A question that correlates to Carpenter asking, “When did you get hot?/I think I would remember if you had that face.” And when Grande realizes the hotness of this person, she decides, “This is a bad, bad thing/Oh baby, you’re a real nightmare.”
But naturally, that’s never deterred Grande from jumping into bed with someone before. Maybe that’s why she concedes of her behavior on the final track, “Nowhere, Nobody,” “Hard to believe in a perfect ending.” The meta-ness of featuring that as the opening line to the last song on the album is a testament to Grande’s gift for a sense of irony and completion. At least musically speaking. And she can also concede that maybe her inability to believe in “perfect” endings (let alone happy ones—after all, she does say on “Petal,” “All of my favorite stories end in some kind of catastrophe”) is what makes “this prophecy… self-fulfilling.” In other words, it’s one of those vicious circle things where, because Grande hasn’t had a “perfect ending” when it comes to her relationships, she’s been conditioned to believe she never will, thereby feeding into the self-fulfilling part.
Even so, she can still go back to some element of her “Breathin” messaging by instructing, “Deep breaths, honey/There’s no more running/And there’s nowhere with nobody else that I’d rather be/I’m taking you/Deep breaths, honey/We’ve at least till morning/Then there’s nowhere, nobody else that I’d rather be with.” All of this said in a very Imogen Heap-on-“Hide and Seek” kind of way. That is, it’s as if Grande, too, used a harmonizer and vocoder to get this message across. And, as for another message that comes across, Grande again has some overlap with an element of Charli XCX’s philosophy on Music, Fashion, Film. Specifically, what Charli states on “No One Lasts Forever”: “I know deep down that it’s here and now/‘Cause nothing’s gonna last forever.” While Charli might not have been referring to her romance de la nuit, Grande is. And whoever her “forever suitor” might turn out to be (if there even is a future in which Grande ends up with “just one” person), it seems she’s made her peace with living for the now, rather than worrying so much about the future. Particularly since, if there is no future (environmentally speaking), she might as well keep sowing them damn oats.
Besides, “petal in the pavement,” the most evocative line from the title track, is like her version of Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector writing, “It’s [the rose in Spanish Harlem] growing in the street right up through the concrete/But soft and sweet and dreaming” or Leonard Cohen saying, “There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” So, for as disillusioned or fatalistic as she might sound at times on Petal, the point is also to make certain her listeners know that, for her—as it “should be” for everyone else—there is always a sense of hope, a way to find a silver lining. A petal in the pavement (a.k.a. a flower growing out of the concrete).
+ There are no comments
Add yours