Eternal Sunshine on dimmer switch
Ariana Grande's latest album is technically brilliant, but it lacks heat of earlier efforts
Eternal Sunshine ★★ out of 5 Ariana Grand Republic Records
Big stars set their own schedules. Hence Ariana Grande was able to announce in 2022 that she wouldn't be releasing a new album until after she had finished filming her role in a forthcoming two-part screen adaptation of the stage musical Wicked. But now, as if with a click of ruby slippers, appears Eternal Sunshine — an apparently impulsive release made between September and December last year.
“I don't want anything but more time,” the singer sighs in the final song. The granting of that wish provides an explanation for the album's existence. Grande began working on it when she had time on her hands due to Wicked's production being shut down by Hollywood strike action. But there's also a painful personal motive for her unplanned return to the recording studio.
Eternal Sunshine is her divorce album. It makes a speedy response to the end of her marriage to Dalton Gomez, which itself proved a fairly speedy affair. Having got hitched in 2021, the star and the civilian — a luxury real estate agent to be precise — had their divorce finalized last October, while she was making this album. It opens with her asking: “How can I tell if I'm in the right relationship?”
The dilemma receives an underwhelming answer at the end of the album with a recording of Grande's grandmother telling us the secret of a lasting relationship: a good night kiss. Meanwhile, we find the singer renewing her professional relationship with producer Max Martin. The Swedish chart-pop supremo, a regular collaborator, has co-written and co-produced much of the album with her.
Lead single Yes, And? proves a red herring. A U.S. No. 1 on release in January, this teaser finds Grande in a Madonna-esque house music setting, dancing the proverbial pain away. However, its energy is absent from the rest of the album.
The throbbing synthesizer beat of We Can't Be Friends
( Wait for Your Love) is sabotaged by Grande's vocal melody, which unfolds too slowly for the tempo. Bye is midtempo disco that coasts by on cruise control until coming to a perfunctory halt. Its unvarying smoothness is at variance with lyrics about Grande quitting the marital home, “hostage to these tears” — which are themselves inaudible in her voice.
Lasting just 35 minutes in total, the music is pleasant yet insubstantial. There's quite a lot of feathery pop-soul and R&B, nice enough but too airy to leave an impression. If the avoidance of drama is deliberate, an example of the self-soothing that Grande sings about in Don't Wanna Break up Again, then it doesn't benefit the songs. Named after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film about memory loss, this is her most forgettable album yet.