Ariana Grande’s album Petal

The midterms are coming, and if you think the news cycle feels intense now, just wait until the fall. That's why summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I mean, Martinez, on Up First, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in fewer than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to Up First today wherever you get podcasts.

Ariana Grande has been omnipresent the last few years. She's currently on tour, her personal life is constantly dissected on the internet, she's coming off a long run promoting and starring in the two Wicked movies, one of which earned her an Oscar nomination,

and her song Hate That I Made You Love Me has been everywhere this summer. Yeah, I, I, I hate that I made you love me Sorry if I made me type It was an instant hit and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

And she's just released her new album, Petal. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour to talk about the new album is NPR music reporter Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento.

Hey, Isabella. Hi, Stephen. Also with us, NPR music editor Sheldon Pierce. Welcome back, Sheldon.

Great to be back. It's great to have you both. So, Petal is Ariana Grande's eighth album. It's the follow-up to her hit record Eternal Sunshine from two years ago.

It follows a period of turmoil in the singer's life. Discussions of her relationships and her weight have made Grande an internet fixture in recent years. Conversations about Grande's appearance reached a boiling point this weekend after she released the video for her single, Pedal. She also announced she's taking a step back from public life after her tour, a decision she said she made a while ago.

Her new album touches on her personal life, and it has a mix of sounds ranging from feathery pop to spiky, synth-driven pop rock. Petal is out now. Isabella, I'm going to start with you. We're recording on Monday morning, so we've spent the weekend with the album. What do you think of Petal? I am a little bit lukewarm on this album.

I appreciate a lot of the production choices and that it's a little bit darker, creepier at some points than what Ariana has done in the past. I appreciate a lot of things about that pivot. But to me, I think because I thought this album was going to be like angry Ariana sort of confronting a lot of her relationship with fame, her emotion feels a little bit detached and removed throughout in a way where I was kind of craving a bit more in your face, both emotionally and I think in her vocal performance. So I'm just a little middle of the road here, I think.

Okay. How about you, Sheldon? I'm also wrestling with it. I think it's a lot more muted than I would have expected it to be. There is something kind of whimsical about it, but there is also kind of like foreboding at the edges, which I guess you could say are both aspects of what Hollywood brings to you. but there's also just sort of like a soft focus feel to much of it. There's not a ton of vocal stacking on this album,

which is kind of like Ari's bread and butter. It feels small in its embrace of everything that is surrounding her. And considering the cyclone of emotions that come with listening to Ariana Grande, considering a rabid,

if not overly intense fan base, But also just like a conversation that rings at a fever pitch whenever she's on screen. I expected her to lean into that a bit more, and I just didn't feel like she met that moment. Yeah, and at the risk of echoing what you guys have just said, I'm kind of in the same boat. And part of what has thrown me off about this album release cycle is that this record was really pitched to the world. Words like feral, words like rage, words like experimental have come out. And you really get a sense like, oh my gosh, is this going to be some like fever ray, you know, art storm? Because you think of like pop stars have certainly gone feral before.

There's plenty of precedent for that. But then when you listen to the record and, you know, my initial response, the first couple times I listened to it, my reaction was sort of like, where is she? She doesn't really feel present in these songs. And there's a track on this record called Oh Well.

First of all, it's kind of a shrug of a title. And the lyrics are referencing dysfunction. They're referencing obsession. but she feels three steps removed from the song she's singing.

It's interesting. The first few times I listened, I didn't really even notice that the arrangements are a little bit spikier, a little stormier, a little more tempestuous, certainly than Eternal Sunshine, which was a kind of a vaporous record, had kind of a vaporous vibe. You listen to this and there's more going on in these arrangements and there's more, I think,

to admire in these arrangements. But vocally, she's just really not placed at the top of this mix. And so it feels like she disappears for long stretches of this record. I think it's funny you said, where is she? Because it did kind of sound like she was in another room for a lot of the album. Like there's this layer of remove that I think can be really effective sometimes, but it kind of almost felt monotone throughout in the sense that she always kept that distance. And I think I always think of Ariana as being a pop star that can be so sassy and so funny with turning a phrase. And I think even though that was present in the lyrics, even in a song like Oh Well, sonically it just doesn't even come across.

It's kind of just like rolling off of her in a way that I found it hard to grasp onto anything in this record. Yeah, that distance is also a bit jarring for an artist who has such a big full voice, who has such a big personality historically in her music. I think it's ironic there's a song called Big Feelings because there aren't many of them on this album. Even that song is innuendo, sort of all understatement.

There's not much forward presentation from the star of this record.