Ariana Grande, you’ve done it again.
*If you haven’t read my article “‘Yes, and’ We are ready for new music Ariana’“ you should go do that before continuing*
I don’t know about you, but I have been listening to “Eternal Sunshine” non-stop since its release. And let me just say, I have been held in a chokehold, (sincerest apologies to my roommates).
First announced on January 27, just 15 days after the release of her single “Yes, and?,” fans all across the world were given a brand new thing to look forward to, amidst an already exciting year ahead.
On March 8, Grande released her brand new album “Eternal Sunshine” a 35 minute album consisting of 13 songs:
- intro (end of the world)
- bye
- don’t wanna break up again
- Saturn Returns Interlude
- eternal sunshine
- supernatural
- true story
- the boy is mine
- yes, and?
- we can’t be friends (wait for your love)
- I wish i hated you
- imperfect for you
- ordinary things (feat. Nonna)
Beginning with the song “Intro (end of the world)” the album speaks volumes as she dives into the past few years of emotional turmoil, highlighting her past relationships, experiences and achievements.
“Eternal Sunshine” is a concept album based on the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” a 2004 science fiction romantic drama about Joel Barish who discovers his ex-girlfriend Clementine Kruczynski, has undergone a procedure to have her memories of their relationship erased. Heartbroken, he undergoes the same procedure… won’t spoil the movie anymore than that. You can go watch it for yourself!
While the album is based on the concept of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” she tells personal stories through a beautiful medley of songs about her heartbreaks, and overcoming her past relationships, moving towards “brighter days ahead” and a new stage of healing.
Grande has a way of rubbing salt in the wound with her writing, beginning this era with a clap-back song “Yes, and?” telling the haters to mind their own business, and explaining that the fake news doesn’t get to her. However in her new album she covers a variety of hard hitting topics including the idea that her marriage felt like a “situationship” along with divorce, cheating, personal growth, and so much more.
The album has been a hit across all platforms, gaining 58.1 million streams on its release day and reaching over 1 billion streams on Spotify within the first month.
Before the release, Grande continued her tradition of teasers through her Instagram, posting photos highlighting aspects of her music video for “We can’t be friends (wait for your love)” making fans increasingly excited for the album.
“We can’t be friends (wait for your love)” is the tenth song on the album that has taken the internet by storm, making its way across TikTok, going viral and sitting at number three on Billboard’s Hot 100 list as of March 30.
The music video for the song broke hearts as Grande showcased her acting skills and vulnerability in the video, in which her character in the video, “Peaches” (a play on the name of the character Clementine) undergoes the memory erasing procedure. Throughout the music video we see memories of her past relationship.
The scene specifically that seemed to be the most emotionally grasping was what fans call the “necklace scene” which shows a memory of Ariana “Peaches” sitting on a kitchen table on her birthday with her love interest, played by the beloved Evan Peters. After the memory is shown, she starts crying and fidgeting with her necklace, which viewers see moments later was a gift from him. As she cries she proceeds to plead with the workers doing the procedure, begging them to let her keep this one memory.
At the end of the video we see both exes have undergone the same procedure as they walk past one another on the street hand-in-hand with new people making no acknowledgment of one another.
Fans speculate the song is about her divorce with ex-husband Dalton Gomez, making the song and music video that-much-more emotional for invested fans. Not to mention the beautiful cinematography in the video, showing memories of the two in different romantic settings.
The song ends with a chorus of strings, which Ariana tends to add to her more emotional pieces.
When asked by Zach Sang in their March 12 Interview why she chose strings for the end she said, “They’re just the most emotional sound in the world, I love them so much.”
The song is followed by “I wish I hated you” a gut wrenching piece where listeners can hear Grande crying through her lyrics as she sings about the confusion brought on by the ending a romantic relationship, along with the concept of wishing an ex-partner was worse to make the process of moving on from them a little easier.
Let me lay some of these lyrics out.
“Hung all my clothes in the closet you made / Your shoes still in boxes I send them your way / hoping life brings you no new pain / I rearrange my memories, I try to rewrite our life / But no matter how I try to / And no matter how I want to / And no matter how easy things could be if I did / And no matter how guilty I still feel saying it / I wish I hated you / I wish that weren’t true / Wish there was worse to you / I wish you were worse to me.”
The song perfectly encapsulates the pain of looking back on a relationship or friendship’s end, and how hard it can be sometimes to have negative feelings towards the person you’ve shared so many memories with.
The second verse hits even harder.
“Our shadows dance in a parallel plane / just two different endings / you learn to repair / and I learn to keep me in one place / so close and yet so far / if only we had known from the start.”
Towards the end of the song, Grande’s voice can be heard cracking as she sings the final chorus which caught many listeners off guard but is so appreciated for her vulnerability. This was heavily vocalized on X (Twitter).
She said to Zach Sang, “It’s one that I won’t listen to, or sing live. But I think it’s a very important colour to exist within the album because […] it’s an important piece of the puzzle to me.”
The song reminds fans of the song “Ghostin” from one of her previous albums “thank u, next” which is another one that she says in an old interview with Sang from 2019 that she won’t listen to, but is her moms favourite. Fans have even made mashups of the two songs on Tiktok.
The thing that makes this album so special, is how honest Grande is through her lyrics. She put her heart and soul into the writing and seems to be one that exposes her pain differently than the other albums she has produced. She didn’t seem to feel the need to cover anything up with fancy high notes or raps, simply just her beautiful voice and raw feelings.
This album tells a story.
The very first line we hear in the intro says, “How can I tell if I’m in the right relationship?” and the album ends with her Nonna in “ordinary thing” saying to her on the phone, “Never go to bed without kissin’ goodnight. That’s the worst thing to do, don’t ever do that. And if you can’t, and if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, you’re in the wrong place, get out.”
A genius way of opening and closing the story, she begins with a question and ends with an answer.
This album has felt the most personal in my opinion compared to the other albums she has released, even though they are all so personal. It’s hard to explain why. But as someone who has been listening to her music for years and seen from an outside public perspective the things she has gone through, not even seeing the deeper aspects of her life, it feels the most relatable and real.
Ariana has an impressive way of using her words in a way that expose what feels like some of my innermost feelings. Why? Because she’s not afraid to be honest.
These are some lyrics from the album that hit the deepest for me.
- “Me and my truth, we sit in silence / baby girl it’s just me and you.” (We can’t be friends)
- “I don’t wanna tiptoe, but I don’t wanna hide / but I don’t wanna feed this monstrous fire / just wanna let this story die / and I’ll be alright.” (We can’t be friends)
- “I’d like to just pretend / you cling to your papers and pens / wait until you like me again / wait for your love.” (We can’t be friends)
- “Then I had this interaction I’ve been thinking bout’ for like five weeks / wonder if he’s thinking bout’ it too and smiling / wonder if he knows that that’s been what’s inspiring me / wonder if he’s judging me like I am right now.” (Intro)
- “My girls, they always come through in a sticky situation / say it’s fine / happens all the time.” (Boy is mine)
- “In case you haven’t noticed / Well, everybody’s tired / and healin’ from somebody / something we don’t see just right.” (Yes, and?)
I couldn’t agree more with Zach Sang’s ending statement in the Eternal Sunshine interview when he says,
“There’s something to taking cracks and scratches and turning it into something beautiful. And that is what’s happening with this album.”