Ariana Grande's petal is out, and there is not one guest feature on it
Ariana Grande's eighth studio album landed on 31 July: 12 tracks, all lowercase, no features, with Ilya Salmanzadeh on executive production.
One decision on petal says more than any lyric: there is not a single guest on the record. In an era when most pop albums read like a contacts list, Ariana Grande spends all 12 tracks alone at the microphone.
What is petal?
It is Grande’s eighth studio album, released on 31 July through her own imprint, BabyDoll Music, with Republic Records. Twelve tracks, every title styled in lowercase, recorded between January and April of this year.
She co-wrote and executive-produced it with Ilya Salmanzadeh, the Swedish-Iranian producer who has been circling her records for years. Having only two people in the decision chair is unusual on a pop album this size, and you can hear it: the record plays as one sustained idea rather than a stack of sessions.
Which single set it up?
Hate That I Made You Love Me, out on 29 May. It debuted straight at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK singles chart, settling the commercial question before the album existed.
The running order goes from kiss me to nowhere, nobody, taking in big feelings, freak and bad thing (bunny hop) along the way — titles that suggest a record less interested in sounding enormous than in sounding direct. After years split between music and Hollywood, this is the first project where Grande seems to be doing one thing at a time.
Is it worth your time?
It is, particularly if feature inflation has been wearing you down. A 12-track album with no guests is a bet: nobody is there to prop up a weak song, and nobody is there to steal the focus either.
It has been a generous summer for returns — Shania Twain came back with Little Miss Twain and brought Josh Homme along — and the next stop on the pop calendar is the VMAs, whose nominations are out with Kendrick Lamar in front. The full tracklist and dates live on Grande’s official site.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Emma / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
