By: Gowri Sunil
Opinion Editor
During her Eternal Sunshine tour, three-time Grammy Award winner and Oscar nominee Ariana Grande released her eighth album, Petal, on Jul. 31. The album features 12 songs, capturing the emotions of growing through love and anger while criticizing the societal expectations that come with the public eye.
The album’s title and cover itself allude to this theme. Repeated references to flowers and blooming connect to the title, Petal, as Grande explores her true self away from the opinions of others. The album cover, a close-up black-and-white photo of Grande with strands of hair scattered across her face, extends this idea visually. At a glance, Grande appears to be joyful; however, the manner in which her hair covers a part of her face as well as the physical closeness to Grande symbolize the difference between being seen and being fully understood.
In an interview with Apple Music, Grande pointed out how Petal differs from her previous albums: “It pulls from many different parts of myself and yet, at the same time, it is very experimental and different for me.” The experimentation of her new album is evident from the background music in her songs. From the overlapping vocals and abrupt instrumentals in Kiss Me to the higher-pitched voice in Warning Signs, her album uses unconventional sound choices to express her shifting emotions.
In the same interview with Apple Music, Grande explained that she wrote her new songs with a sort of “unfiltered rage” that she usually would have edited out in her previous albums. The titular track, Petal, portrays Grande’s anger most clearly when she describes herself as a “petal in the pavement.” The contrast between a fragile, beautiful petal and a hard, dull pavement reflects her feelings of surviving amidst an unforgiving environment where the public frequently criticize her personal life. Moreover, Grande questions the expectation that she must turn her painful experiences into Billboard hits for fans to applaud and consume. She continues this theme in the song, Freak, where she questions being someone else’s fantasy rather than pursuing the life she has imagined for herself. Warning Signs, another track, similarly explores a moment during which Grande feels like she is hearing her own voice from a passing taxi while wishing someone would hear her. Like the album’s cover, the song recognizes that despite being one of the most well-known vocalists in pop music who has millions listening to her work, Grande can still feel unseen.
Throughout Petal, Grande never fully answers the doubts she raises, and perhaps that is the project’s point. In her final song, Nowhere, Nobody, she admits it is “hard to believe in a perfect ending,” but she learns to embrace the uncertainty. Likewise, Petal does not portray Grande as escaping the criticism or expectations society places upon her, but rather learning how to live alongside them.
(Sources: Apple Music, ELLE)