Ariana Grande returns with Petal, a transitional album that challenges the expectations of mainstream pop without yet managing to completely shed her identity.
Ariana-Grande-Petal-2026 capture from @arianagrande
Crossing the threshold of thirty in the contemporary pop industry almost always coincides with a formal crossroads: indulging in the exaltation of one’s youth to reassure the markets, or creating yet another public apology manual to clean up one’s reputation and change tone.
Ariana Grande chooses a third, decidedly more ambiguous way: with “Petal”, her eighth studio album, she simply decides to sabotage the character that the public has learned to recognize, transforming her discography into a room of mirrors where self-satisfaction blends with the most ruthless sarcasm, without managing to completely sever the threads that keep her anchored to her solid golden cage.
It is a dry, visceral and deliberately imperfect record in its intentions of deconstruction. The thirteen tracks that make up the work mark a notable stylistic demarcation compared to the recent past. The production abandons the gloss and smoothness of synth-pop to channel itself into a lean, organic and at times underground R&B. Even from a strictly vocal point of view, the famous almost divine and ethereal head register that had characterized the past leaves room for a prominent use of the chest register and medium frequencies.
At the level of sound architecture, the real turning point lies in the change in the production center of gravity. Max Martin visibly retreats, limiting his performance to just three songs and leaving the keys to the control room in the hands of ILYA (Ilya Salmanzadeh) and Grande herself. It is a move that opens the door to unexpected digressions: if episodes like Kiss Me or Freak they maintain an umbilical cord with his usual pop, elsewhere rough edges and nuances emerge that unceremoniously cite avant-R&B decontextualizations.
The visual aesthetic of the album accurately reflects this break: the black and white cover strips Ariana of her fetish par excellence, the classic high ponytail, opting for an almost stoic essentiality. The title track, and second single, Petalserves as the conceptual pivot of the entire project. The flower is not understood here in the decorative sense to which pop has accustomed us.
The sharpest element of “Petal” undoubtedly lies in the lyrical tone. Unscrupulous, biting, at times explicitly vulgar in the most liberating sense of the term. In Never Get Over Mean icy funk groove intertwines with a velvety soul voice. Kinetic hysteria continues with Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)a fast track lit by a synthetic flash at Blinding Lightsbefore veering towards the brazen self-satisfaction of Big Feelings.
Here Ariana brazenly takes credit for a grown man crying during sex with her, bluntly stating:
A pussy so sweet, a tear fell from his eye.”
After such a bold statement, the singer-songwriter continues to celebrate her powers, encouraging her lover to enjoy them while they last.
The feeling of an unfinished or partially tamed emancipation is what holds the album back from making a real leap in quality. The only real exception that fully demonstrates what the album could have been is the final track, the ballad Nowhere, Nobody. Featuring a guitar drowned in a strong echo effect and supported by a driving rhythm, the track highlights Grande’s rich, warm and expertly layered voice, stripping it of every pose and giving us the most sincere and memorable moment of the entire project.
“Petal” is not an album of total redemption nor the masterpiece of absolute maturity, but the imperfect portrait of an artist who, having reached her third decade of life, claims the right to hatred, sarcasm and experimentation.
While remaining partially caged in the production logic of the mainstream, Ariana Grande shows a legitimate formal restlessness. An interlocutory but necessary passage, which leaves the crucial question hanging: in the next chapters will he really have the courage to completely break the chains of the song form to push himself beyond the edge?
SCORE: 6.50
THE VOTES OF OTHERS
Rolling Stone (USA) – Rating 8.00
Pitchfork – Rating 6.50
TO LISTEN NOW
Petal – Big Feelings – Never Get Over Me
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Listen three times from start to finish!
TRACKLIST
Kiss Me
Hate That I Made You Love Me
Petal
Stay
Oh Well
Big Feelings
Freaks
Warning Signs (Interlude)
Like I Do
Never Get Over Me
Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)
Nowhere, Nobody
DISCOGRAPHY
2013 – Yours Truly
2014 – My Everything
2016 – Dangerous Woman
2018 – Sweetener
2019 – Thank U, Next
2020 – Positions
2024 – Eternal Sunshine
2026 – Petal
VIDEO
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