Pop Culture Happy Hour - Ariana Grande’s album Petal

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Ariana Grande has been omnipresent the last few years. Discussions of her relationships and her weight have made Grande an internet fixture in recent years. She’s coming off a long run promoting and starring in the two Wicked films, and her hit song “Hate That I Made You Love Me” has been everywhere this summer. She’s also announced she’s taking a step back from public life after her current tour. So with the release of her new album, Petal, what do we make of Grande’s latest batch of songs, and do they successfully capture this moment in her life?Looking for more buzzy pop music conversations? Check out:Olivia Rodrigo seems pretty sad, but does she still generate bangers?On 'Arirang,' BTS nods to K-pop's past, present and futureConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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. 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 Gomes 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. Pedal 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 pedal? I am a little bit lukewarm on this album. I appreciate a lot of the production choices and that it's like 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 I, you know, 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? Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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,

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. A 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 a move 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. And 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, and considering the feralness of it all, the ways in which she presented this as an engagement with the narrative, it just feels so pulled back in so many ways that it's hard to really latch on to its overall vibe or message. One thing that we're getting at here is I think our expectations were very different from what this record delivered. And, you know, to a certain extent, there's only so much you can do about that and

only so much you can do about your own expectations. But one reason that my expectations were set the way they were is that Ariana Grande does have a history of grappling with her life fairly directly in songs in ways that have real emotional intelligence. I think the song, Thank You Next, is one of the best, most thoughtful, most really like emotionally wise, breakup songs in 21st Century Pop. And, you know, in that song, she's name-checking X's. We know about those X's, and she's reflecting on them in ways that kind of speak to how we think of those relationships. But then she's kind of coming to this point about embracing the self and everything that feels very healthy and feels like this is a song that I would play if my kid was going through a breakup and I

wanted to give them a song, you know, that was relatable, I would give them that song. And I think that by comparison, it's hard to kind of parse out when songs on this record are about specific relationships and when they're about her relationship with the public. And that's deliberately kept somewhat opaque. But a song like Hate That I Made You Love Me, it feels like a little bit of a heel turn, but it also doesn't really feel like it's getting at any deeper, broader thoughts on how she's fit into her relationships, how she fits into her relationships with the public. The whole vibe of the song is just kind of, ain't I a stinker? Oops, I did it again. Instead of getting at some of the wiser, more deeply felt examinations that she's put on previous

records. Yeah, I totally agree. I was listening to Thank You Next yesterday and it was like, this song is a masterclass at like appreciating what you've learned from relationships about choosing yourself in the middle of relationships. Like there's all of these deeply emotional lessons that she presents in such a witty and funny way. And I feel like that voice for me was largely absent in this album. And particularly in the way like Sheldon, you mentioned big feelings. Like there's so much sort of whispery, breathy vocal work happening here. And she sounds great.

But like I just missed a moment of Ariana just like really hitting the note. like going all in, just being a little bit bolder and more forward. And the way that we know that she can be. And I was just like, I kept waiting for that to happen. And then it never really did. Yeah. Part of the idea behind expectations is that we have seen her meet a moment like this before. Sweetener as a record was this incredible, almost evolutionary process for her at a moment that

was like catastrophic and traumatizing, like thinking about no tears left to cry or get well soon as songs directly addressing a terrorist attack that happened at an Ariana Grande concert. I mean, she has had to reflect with a lot of difficult things across her career and has delivered incredible music that is in conversation with those things. And so you felt as a listener and a long time enjoyer of her music that this was another opportunity to do so. And it felt like she just kind of didn't get there. I mean, not to project too much. much onto her because there's far too much of that already. But this album does feel directly in conversation with the public perception. It is truly a record for like a parisocial public. There are a

lot of songs that are kind of written as love songs, but then when you parse them, there's sort of a tension there where it feels like she's addressing people who are too up close to her, people who are too inside of her life, people who are not taking her songs as part of their lives, but as extension of hers. And so you can feel her like wrestling with that reality, but it feels like she never really gets over the hump and pushes towards some kind of like really powerful conclusion.

I think all of that could have been overwritten if this record was really doing something special. But sonically, it just, doesn't really hold together the way past records have, and as such, you're just kind of left wanting. Yeah, that's a great point. We'll have a lot more thoughts on Ariana Grande and her album Petal and how it hits differently after this weekend, after this quick break.

And we are back, so I wanted to ask about your relationship with this record and how it's evolved over the course of the weekend, because it's hard to hear this record divorced from the context surrounding her life. So last Friday, Ariana Grande not only dropped this record, she also dropped the video for the song pedal, the title track from the record, which the video is certainly making a lot of subtext text about what this record is about, but it has also sparked yet another storm of kind of online conversation about her appearance, about her weight. And what I'm wondering is if listening to this record kind of repeatedly over the course of the weekend, as we all did, if the shifting context around this record changed how it felt to listen to it. To me, this record felt a little bit different Monday morning than it did Friday morning. Yeah, I would say it added a lot of nuance for me. And, you know, a lot of my complaints about this record have been that she does feel removed.

And I think seeing this sort of rabid reaction and heightened discourse around her every move, particularly, you know, in regards to the music video and what happened over the weekend, I think it gives me more understanding of why this album sounds so guarded. Yes. You know, I think Ariana is a pop star that has had to endure a lot of public tragedy and has had to navigate that again and again. She's been on this endless press tour. She is touring her last album while releasing a new album. I think there's just a level of overexposure here that listening to that after hearing her say she needs to take a step back. It adds a lot of empathy and I think just, yeah, it brings home why she might be feeling like she needs to keep the public and the people in her life perhaps at arm's length right now. I mean, over the weekend there was a lyric from, hate that I made you love me that just kind of kept ringing out in my ears.

The lyrics are something like, I held your projections when you felt so insecure. Tell me why it is this way, why you hate to see women endure. I feel insecure. Tell me why is it this way, why you so hate to see women endure. I mean, that, in a nutshell, feels like it is trying to make sense of a searing spotlight that has been sort of boring a hole through her, not just this cycle, but over several cycles as she has become more public-facing, as she became one of the key characters in a franchise with another ravenous fandom. She has just sort of arrived at the center of so much scrutiny,

and you can hear her trying to reconcile that across this record. You can understand why there is sort of a reticence in it, why there is a smallness, why she is sort of trying to withdraw from that, but I think the tension of it is that she can't, right? I mean, she is still releasing a record, and we know that she plans to step away from public life where she says she is after the end of the Eternal Sunshine Tour. She's still on tour now, and she has another movie coming out in the fall. So there is a bit of a friction between the reality she is living. But I do think it's hard not to end.

empathize with someone going through what she's going through, someone who is faced with a public that claims to love you, but their love really starts to feel poisonous. There are references to that kind of thing where it's like, oh, I can't escape you guys. I kind of need you guys, but also this relationship is hurting me. And it is sort of poignant to have to listen to the record with that understanding. But I mean, to Issa's point, like, There has been tragedy in her career before this, and she has always found a way to rise above. It just felt like in this instance, she is still sort of struggling to work her way through what comes next. Yeah, I mean, I think, and I hope that the conversation around this record becomes part of a larger conversation about just how suffocating life in the fish bowl of

pop stardom in 2026 is, I wish for her time, even though I'm disappointed in this record, this record wasn't kind of what I necessarily hoped it would be. There's this larger picture here of an enormously talented, enormously

gifted artist and just wanting her to have as many healthy resources as possible and wanting that for everybody who is moving through this business at every level. Because at every level of the music industry, there are pitfalls and there are landmines. And the more, you know,

we can talk about that in a healthy and productive way, the more opportunities she's going to have to make the records that she wants to make. And I think guarded is really what comes through about this record. And I understand that completely. I think it speaks volumes to, like, the pop panopticon of, like, the intense heightened observation around someone like her, who is in the public eye in so many different ways and a desire to just to want to engage with it, but to also have the right to just close the door and take her time. And from a career standpoint, I mean, she's got nothing left to prove. She has truly been one of the defining pop artists of her generation,

if not the entire pantheon of pop music. She has been such an influential force. And if she does choose to step away, however long, she chooses to step away, that is not only her right as a person and as an artist, but she has also earned it in the work that she's put out. And her career speaks for itself, no matter where she goes from here. Yeah, and I think regardless of whether she's earned it, if she needs it, I hope she gets it. And I hope that she thrives.

I'm absolutely rooting for her. I mean, before we go, I did want to shout out. Like, there are some tracks on this record that, hint at some interesting directions. And one in particular, I know you are a fan of Issa. Yeah, I really liked Bad Thing, parentheses, bunny hop. I love hearing Ariana with those more sort of like punky guitar textures. I think it's a fun pivot. And again, I'm excited for future experimentation from her whenever she's ready to keep going. Yeah, I love Never Get Over Me on an album that is so withdrawn. That is like,

classic man-eater Ari. There's a sort of like take no prisoners energy to it that feels good. And you really wish that she had lived in that headspace a bit more because she is so fun in that space. And I think

that is just a little bit of what this record is missing, but that song, it just feels good to listen to. That brings us to the end of our show. Isabella Gomez Sermiento, Sheldon Pierce. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks, Stephen.

This episode was produced by Mike Katzf and Hufza Fathema and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Audio engineering was performed by Sina Lofredo. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.