Eternal Sunshine

With some of her most vulnerable and creative music to date, the pop princess navigates a fresh start.

Sophia Goetz

For one of the top musicians in music, Ariana Grande has had a relatively quiet three and a half years. She became almost universally known after launching her musical career in 2013 with superhuman speed and releasing six albums in less than seven years (a formidable record for anyone whose name doesn't involve Swift or Prince). She also went on constant tours, launched multimillion-dollar brands, amassed over a billion Spotify plays, and became one of the most powerful figures on social media.

Since Grande got married and divorced since the release of her last album, the resulting emotions are evident in the music and lyrics of this album. Still, they are also universal enough to relate to everyone who has ever experienced love, marriage, or heartbreak. Love, loss, lust, rage, infatuation, betrayal, and grief are all present, as is the struggle to conform to the expectations of others. Some of the album’s most cogent lines include: “Now she's in my bed laying on your chest/ Now I'm in my head wondering how this ends”; “I fall asleep crying/ You turn up the TV”; "Spent so much on therapy; blamed my own codependency"; and the fantastic line “You played me like Atari” receive a throwback video game sound effect as punctuation.

To sum up, “Eternal Sunshine” is a musical journal of a life lived very publicly by someone with a Beyonce/Taylor-level capacity to give just enough to keep her most invested followers informed and guessing (and, of course, titillated). Obviously, the title is ironic.