Let me get all the SpongeBob jokes out of the way up top: Ariana plays a character named Peaches in the music video for “we can't be friends (wait for your love)” an obvious nod to Kate Winslet’s iconic role as Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Perhaps a better name would have been Pineapple. In the song “Eternal Sunshine” when she sings “Yet you played me like Atari," do you think she was envisioning one of those SpongeBob plug-and-play TV controllers from Jakks? Though I concede that lyrically that doesn’t scan. Lastly, in the song “Imperfect For You” she pauses for a moment after singing “How could we know/ We’d rearrange all the cosmos?” I can’t be the only one who half expected a call-out for fellow Nickelodeon power couple Cosmo and Wanda on first listen.
This Friday Ariana Grande released her hotly anticipated seventh studio album with Eternal Sunshine. The album, which was rumored to be a dance hall collection of house bangers, instead veered into a more diaristic approach using a vocal style that more closely mirrored that of thank u next. The lead single, “yes, and?” a favorite amongst improv troupes everywhere (finally, a song for us!) was a bit of a fakeout as you’d be hard-pressed to find many danceable songs on the album. Even Ariana seems to be disinterested in the dancefloor this time around, as on songs like “bye” she sings, “Usually, I'd join you on the floor / but this dance ain't for me.” The album is less JLo on the floor, and more Breath(2AM) on the floor.
This is, of course, Ariana’s divorce album, a fact which makes it impossible to uh divorce this album from the social context through which it was released. In much of the promotion leading up to the release of this album Ariana has remarked that she wants to embrace anonymity, allowing herself some room from revealing every aspect of her life through her music and interviews. Such is the double-edged nature of these parasocial relationships that global superstars like Ariana Grande inhabit. On one hand, fans expect to know everything about an artist, but then when said artist acts in a way that does not align with the imaginary construct they have painted in their mind— the fans turn.
We started to see this shift after the drama involving fellow Wicked co-star, and former SpongeBob actor, Ethan Slater. The internet damn-near lost their mind over this relationship, with seemingly everyone offering up their own steaming hot takes. What this revealed, and what I believe this entire album from Ariana reveals, is just how much we as an audience are willing to project. And realistically, how can it be called anything else? We don’t know Ariana or Ethan personally, but we do know someone who cheated on us once, and so we project that storyline onto this one without much thought or empathy for the situation.
Now, I do not want to be out here in a public forum defending cheaters, nor do I think that millionaire makeup moguls need my tears to keep them safe. But at the same time, I can imagine, it is a daunting task to create art that lets people in, that allows you to heal, and helps you to process, while also having to temper the public’s own prying concern into your personal affairs. Affairs was an ill-used word there, let’s say personal life instead just so I don’t get sued. How can we ask our artists to create powerful art, when we insert ourselves into their narratives? How can an artist create art that lets us in, and at the same time protect their own privacy?
So what of the album? Was all of this worth it? Personally, if the project was purely a vehicle for second single, “we can't be friends (wait for your love)” then it would be worth it. A euphoric and pulsing take on Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” the song is just begging for an Ethel Cain remix. Here I think Ariana finds her stride, a song that not only offers a window into her emotional experience but also an opportunity for the listener to work through whatever they need to in their own time as well.
One last parting thought: whatever happened to album covers? During the rollout for this project, Ariana released several alternate covers. The latest marketing ploy (perhaps spearheaded by Taylor Swift’s behemoth hold over on vinyl production) seems to repackage the same logic of a Pokémon game with its multiple versions. While you can say this is purely for the die-hard collectors and completionists, I also feel it robs an album of a unique personality. Instead of leading with the symbolically salient cover of Ariana leaning on herself, she instead opted to pelt us with Target exclusive after Target exclusive cover. I wish artists would stop doing this, and let us sit with one world-creating album. It starts to feel less like a definitive statement on their art, and more like several pieces of content to be used for their Instagram during the hype-season.