Eternal Sunshine
When Ariana Grande was 25, she sang that she only wanted to walk down the aisle once.
Five years later, her biggest nightmare has come true: She’s divorced.
“How can I tell if I’m in the right relationship? Aren’t you really supposed to know that s–t?” she wonders on the heavenly introduction to her new concept album, “Eternal Sunshine” (out Friday).
But it doesn’t take long for Grande to accept the dreaded fact that the white picket fence that is her two-year marriage to real estate broker Dalton Gomez is falling apart.
By the second track, aptly titled “Bye,” she’s packing her bags while waiting for her best friend to whisk her away to freedom.
“At least I know how hard we tried, both you and me,” she sings to Gomez.
Grande’s feelings about her ex-husband are all over the place.
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One minute she’s praising him for embracing her “f–ked up” flaws (on “Imperfect for You”) and the next she’s calling him out for playing her “like Atari” (on the album’s title track).
But who can blame her? It’s the same complex balancing act everyone who’s fallen out of love has navigated.
And the Grammy winner does so with grace, choosing to celebrate a relationship she once grieved so that she can heal and move on.
“Hoping life brings you no new pain,” she tells Gomez on “I Wish I Hated You,” an ambient tune about lingering love that evokes her idol Imogen Heap.
Much of the vocally stunning “Eternal Sunshine,” which is named after the Jim Carrey-starring 2004 movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” leans R&B, but when Grande flexes her pop-star muscle (with the help of powerhouse producer Max Martin), magic happens.
The album’s lead single, “Yes, And?” — which aims to hush widespread speculation that there was overlap in the singer’s marriage and new relationship with her “Wicked” co-star Ethan Slater — is as fierce as Madonna’s seminal 1990 house hit “Vogue,” while the standout “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” is an inherently sad banger à la Robyn’s 2010 opus “Dancing on My Own.”
It’s a seamless melding of genres that only a versatile talent like Grande could perfect.
