From heartbreak to love and growth, Ariana Grande makes her emotional return to music following her three-year hiatus, with her seventh studio album “eternal sunshine.” With the help of producer Max Martin, with whom she wrote or produced 11 of the 13 tracks, Grande explores her inner thoughts and perspective on major events and experiences she’d gone through during her hiatus. Looking back on the divorcing of her husband of two years, Dalton Gomez, and the beginning of a relationship with actor Ethan Slater,  themes of ending romance and exploring new love shine through the album, making it one of her most personal to date. Grande exemplifies the development of her artistic style of pop/RNB by using melodic rhythms and house influences, taking on a vulnerable aesthetic sonically and lyrically.

As this is Grande’s first album post-hiatus, much production has gone into introducing the aesthetic and message of the album to fans. With the pre-release of her single “yes, and?,” a new age house track, she focused outwardly on being confident and proud of decisions regardless of criticisms made by the public. While the statement track meant to address her haters, the song was ultimately disappointing for a comeback and lessened my excitement for the upcoming album because of its inability to mesh with the rest of the tracks. The upbeat tone took away from the deeply emotional meaning behind the other songs and did not fully showcase the extent of the album’s heartfelt messages.

However, after listening to the entire album, it was clearly written and sung as a conversational story to oneself questioning relationships and life in general, holding a deeper complexity that enticed me. In her track, “eternal sunshine,” Grande voices her doubts about her place in a relationship going far enough to ask, “If it all ended tomorrow, would I be the one on your mind?” which was answered in the following track, “bye.” The flow of her lyrics create seamless transitions between songs, coming together in an immersive album following a story of love and heartache. 

While some of her later tracks were relatively stiff compared to the more popular songs off the album, they still held value to the narrative being told. Grande’s corresponding tracks, “supernatural” and “true story,” showed the contrasting actions of throwing blame back and forth in an ending relationship and pleading for its survival. The latter’s metal bass amped up a slinky song about finger-pointing as Grande sings “I’ll play the villain if you need me to, I know how this goes.” This fun track shows the festering resentment behind a relationship’s demise, making it easily relatable. 

One of my favorite tracks off the album was “the boy is mine”, which takes inspiration from Brandy and Monica’s 1998 hit, “That Boy is Mine.” This lusty song about a forbidden crush that many are now relating to Grande’s new man, Ethan Slater.  Despite being referential, the song holds a sound that Grande makes her own. The track used percussion and boy-band aesthetics to showcase her assertion in making a claim and voicing it.

My only note about this album is that I wish Grande included a song that was leaked prematurely, “fantasize”. This song gained enormous popularity through social media, spawning many edits and other videos to go viral using the sound. I loved this track because of its upbeat pop sound that calls back to the 2000s era of music and speaks about a confident lusting romantic woman. I wish this song was included in the album because it fits right into the mindset and brings even more color to the piece. However, as an artist’s art prospers by achieving their true intentions behind it, I trust Grande had the frame of mind to recognise it was better without it.

Grande released the “slightly deluxe” version of “eternal sunshine” on Monday, March 11, which has collaborations from Troye Sivan and Mariah Carey and additional songs. These songs were fun and enjoyable but I’m glad they weren’t on the original album because of the story being told. In her seventh album, Grande took back her sound and re-established herself in the pop world, beautifully showcasing her vocal ability, which has only matured since its last use. I would suggest “eternal sunshine” to anyone who wants to sit in their emotions and embrace heartbreak in order to grow, and I will surely listen to this album again.