Ariana Grande Takes Romantic Inventory on “Eternal Sunshine”

Confessional pop music has become freighted over the years by a kind of heightened expectation. Fans see more of pop stars now, in the quasi-candid precincts of social media, which means that fans believe themselves to have an understanding of pop stars, and there is a way in which songs or albums or music videos can capitalize on that understanding (or, as it were, misunderstanding). The thirty-year-old pop star Ariana Grande, in the course of a decade-plus musical career consisting of six platinum or multiplatinum albums, has revelled in blurring the line between what's in her songs and what's in the tabloids, be it with cryptic (or not-so-cryptic) social-media postings or with well-timed photo ops. (Recall, for example, the 2018 shot of Grande with her then fiancé, Pete Davidson, holding a lollipop while walking down the street and looking up at Davidson in doe-eyed admiration.) More even than Taylor Swift , whose memoiristic songwriting tends toward a broad universality, Grande's music has sometimes reacted brazenly to the press's speculation and intrigue. She is not afraid to name names, or to conduct internal monologues aloud. Grande, who has just released her seventh album, “Eternal Sunshine,” has been on one stage or another for most of her life. Growing up in Boca Raton, Florida, she performed in regional children's theatre, and sang the national anthem at a Florida Panthers game at the age of eight. She performed with Florida symphonies and, by fourteen, was in Los Angeles, meeting with managers in the hopes of recording an R. & B. album. After a four-season stint on the Nickelodeon show “Victorious,” she transformed herself from a teen TV personality into a full-fledged pop star, with the 2013 album “Yours Truly,” which débuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. It highlighted her range as a performer, and in particular her vocal dexterity, which drew her comparisons to Mariah Carey, though what was most distinctive about Grande as a singer wasn't her Mariah-esque control but the playful twists and turns in her pace and delivery. Grande's most critically acclaimed release was the 2019 […]