Ariana Grande's ETERNAL SUNSHINE ft. Meredith Alling *｡˚❀*

an earnest deep dive on the benevolent pop goddess and her new album... *｡˚❀* *｡˚❀*

Get ready for an Ariana deep dive! Plumbing the depths with me is the brilliant Meredith Alling, writer and Ari fan based in LA. In this post we discuss Eternal Sunshine, her seventh studio album, and all the mystique (and ire) that surrounds her.

MA. What are your favorite songs on the album? At the moment mine are “eternal sunshine,” “imperfect for you,” and “the boy is mine.” I wish I knew the right language to use to describe what I'm hearing. She's going high up in her vocal range but it's not Mariah-sharp—it's airy and rich and buttery. 

CD: Oh man. It’s so hard to pick! “Rich and buttery” is so spot on. I love how cohesive this album is. I loved “yes, and?” the first time I heard it and it’s only grown on me since. I didn’t expect it to be such an anomaly on the album, but it hits at just the right time. I love “eternal sunshine,” “don’t wanna break up again,” and yes, “the boy is mine” is so addicting. But the moment from this album that’s been stuck in my head the most is the “didn’t we / didn’t weeeee?” in the pre-chorus of “bye.” Her songs always seem so standard on the surface, until the second listen, when you realize she’s doing some really weird things.

MA: It’s really cohesive! “don’t wanna break up again” is also a recent favorite, and “bye’ - it’s so hard to choose. What a blessing. I love to hear the moment you have stuck in your head right now, because I know that changes so much. Mine right now is from “the boy is mine” - there’s this part near the end where she sings an emphatic “BOY!” Just perfection. But also, the harmonizing on “eternal sunshine,” I can just see her layering and layering that one. Pop genius!

CD: Pop genius is the truth! One thing I’m dying to know: Why are people so cynical about Ariana? Why does she get such a hard time? I’m thinking about how Ari has never given a fuck if you like her, and how she’s the only contemporary millennial pop star that can go head-to-head with Taylor Swift in terms of mass appeal and sales. (Beyoncé is in her own league). I saw a viral tweet (posted by a Swiftie I am sure, I cannot find it now) with the lyrics to “bye" and it said, "You [Ariana fans] waited 3 years for this?" And this just perplexes me, that Ariana Grande— with her four octave range, and technical prowess— is being judged by the lyrics of her songs! Ariana never claimed to be a lyricist! Yes, she did name a song “pete davidson,” but she sells records, and is obviously great at playing that game. I do feel like there is an expectation for autobiographical lyrics from the pop girlies and I think that's 100% Taylor's doing... did you see that try-hard viral thread about the ex-boyfriend easter eggs in Dua Lipa's “Training Season”? I feel like Taylor has reset what fans expect a pop star to provide. And I love how Ariana has always ignored Taylor’s moves. Ari knows that it sells to name-drop, but at her core she’s never been about “reclaiming her narrative” or “setting the record straight.” She just is.

MA: What a drag that people have to be so cruel. I’m 100% with you on this. It’s not that deep! This is sensuality! And I think she knows what she’s doing. She knows pure pop—whimsy, slinky, playful, sweet, sexy pop. To be honest I have extremely limited knowledge of Taylor Swift. I don’t know how I’ve avoided it, but she seems to be in an entirely different world than Ariana to me, even though I know that isn’t true. The only thing I can point to is that there is something so commercial about Taylor, and while Ariana is obviously part of the whole machine, I don’t put her in that category. This might be for purely selfish reasons. I feel really protective of her, I don’t know why exactly. It might be that I surprise myself by actually liking her music, and liking her, and it’s something that a past, more defended version of myself wouldn’t have seen coming. Stay with me here, but I was never into like… butterflies. I had a hard time embracing softness or frivolity. I had a hard edge. But then I came to understand myself and what was going on, and I started letting myself off the hook and not taking everything so seriously. And Ari is a perfect antidote. Not that she’s unserious, but she represents a sort of aesthetic or stance that I’m letting into my life more, and benefitting from: lightness, folly, femininity. Butterflies. So maybe I’m protecting this lighter, happier version of myself. 

CD: I love that, that's so beautiful! Ari is so healing! I love that you brought up her aesthetic, because I also see her as committed to that. Like she’s a consummate VIBIST—the sound, the atmosphere is where she shines. I also feel as though I'm inspired to show her artistic decisions respect because she shows herself respect. I feel like from her I've learned how to be kinder to myself. Even the way she deals with the end of her marriage on this album— (we know from “thank u, next” she only wanted to wed "once real bad” and “make that shit last”)… how she makes her emotional "mess" feel light and airy, while still lending space to her grief. She is a master confectioner. Over and over again we’ve seen her spool her pain into the perfect treat. She should have been cast as Wonka to be honest. 

MA: I love your description of her as a confectioner! And you’re right, she transmutes her experiences in a way that doesn’t feel strained or indulgent. I guess that’s pop music at its best. 

CD: Part of what makes Ariana so interesting to me is that she's extremely old school, a student of Mariah, Whitney, Barbra, but follows pop culture in this very exact, obsessive way. The art is in the copying. She famously reveres drag culture— but I feel like people don’t pick up on it as much with her, since it doesn’t immediately seem like she’s subverting anything. Maybe it's because I just finished My Name is Barbra and can't stop recommending to people, but I feel like Ari is the closest thing we have to a contemporary Streisand. They’re both super weird and idiosyncratic, committed to their thing, not caring if it feels a little backwards or uncool…they are confident in leading with their talent, their god-given gift, and standardizing everything else around them. Also, I've watched this clip like five times in the last two days:

MA: Just two nerds doing what they do best. I love it. I would also love to read/listen to that memoir. Barbara has a spot in my heart because my middle school best friend’s mom used to drive us to school in her minivan and play on repeat a tape of Barbara Streisand and Bryan Adams’ “I Finally Found Someone,” which is an utterly uncool and earnest song that I love, mostly because of how it has rung in my head for decades. Ariana is a huge dork, ultimately, and I say that with tenderness and without any accusation of twee, and I think a lot of the choices she makes reflect that, just like Babs. Her obsession with recreating movies in a pretty literal way feels really theatre kid to me—LARP energy. Is it Warholian? Maybe. My friend Joy suggested this. Like when she’s recreating Mean Girls she’s doing soup can, or Marilyn. I don’t know. I think she likes to play and hide in a costume. She actually said in her Apple interview with Zane Lowe that eternal sunshine felt like a lovely costume to wear for this project. I’m wondering if it’s as simple as that. She falls hard for certain things and takes the opportunity to share them and play with them and blanket herself in her love for them. I think that’s great. 

CD: I cannot stop thinking about Ari as someone with Warholian tendencies! Mind blown. You and Joy are so onto something. I listened to the Zane Lowe interview after you mentioned it, and it stood out to me that she sees this album as a “full circle” moment for her, after a few years ensconced in the musical theater world of Wicked. She seems to credit Wicked for pulling her away from the rat race of the music industry. To hear her say she’s finally been able to enjoy making music again— I don’t think I realized she was feeling bogged down by it all, and I’m so happy for her that she feels so refreshed! IMO she's never put out a bad album, but the light hearted-ness of Eternal Sunshine is front and center.

MA: The LA in me is about to jump out but… she’s a Cancer, right? I love Cancers. I’m a Cancer-rising and it feels aspirational. I feel like this album is a warm hug she’s giving herself. She’s the love and the lover - the Good Witch to her Dorothy, whose world has been turned upside down. 

CD: Ahhh! I’m a Cancer-moon…maybe that’s why we get her. She (at least, her artistic persona) is all the best things about the Cancer zodiac sign. Emotional, soft, loving, unabashed, brave in the face of the traps of romantic love. I would love to see her make her own fully realized version of JLo's This is Me… Now. She'd knock it out of the park I think. Eternal Sunshine reminds me of Thank U, Next and Positions in that they all feel like distillations of distinct, emotionally significant moments in her life. On these last few albums it feels as though she’s successfully captured these bursts of catharsis after going through something, whether it's painful like Thank U, Next or joyful like Positions or bittersweet like Eternal Sunshine... it all just feels very Cancerian. 

MA: You’re so right about it feeling like a moment, like Thank U, Next and Positions. Both of those albums felt reflexive and really specific to a time. I love Thank U, Next a lot. She was feral. It seems like she had a lot of fun with it and was partying, and I think that was her healing. Just leaning into being a little clubby and sketchy. I love “Monopoly” (with Victoria Monét) from that era too. I love the crazy video. And this performance with Thundercat was around the same time:

I found the branding for Positions to be a little lame, but I liked that album (“POV” is exquisite), and I loved her Vevo performances for that one. Really cool. Both of those albums, and Eternal Sunshine, sort of feel like fragrances. That specificity. Sweetener meanwhile was so big and shiny and grand (I love it too, of course). Like a big shiny swimming pool vs. a vial of delicious notes. She said she made Eternal Sunshine in three and a half months and it feels like that—like a burst. And I love all of the videos of her in the studio producing this album. I get the sense that when she gets an idea she’s like a dog with a bone. The confidence to be in that kind of creative space is a little surprising from her, I think. She does this humility dance a lot, a kind of baby-talk shrug thing, but when she’s focused and producing there’s a confidence there that is really cool and respectable. 

CD: TOTALLY 100%. Because of the way she chooses to present herself (the girlishness, the lightness, the airiness) I think people overlook the fact that she’s a super talented producer. People have a lot to say about Ari’s new relationship with Ethan Slater. This quote from The Cut’s Eternal Sunshine roundtable in particular (not even gonna link it) annoyed me:

"Also I don’t care who she dates — Big Sean is her hottest ex, yes I said it — but if she is really dating SpongeBob, I think people were looking for something that proved exactly why she’s into him. (I thought it was sex, until I listened to the album.)"

It's like hold on, you've come to this album to...find out why she's attracted to the guy she’s dating? And if you think he's so ugly and unappealing, why would you assume "sex" be the reason she was with him? What are you implying? 

I had an epiphany a couple weeks ago while watching Ari and her Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo present the award for best original score at the Oscars. When Ludwig Göransson (who won for Oppenheimer) spoke about collaborating with his wife, at one point you can see Ari upstage listening and smiling, and I was like omg...maybe Ethan Slater is her creative equal, her new or future collaborator. It feels like for the first time since Mac Miller, she is finally dating someone who she can nerd out with artistically. Is it presumptuous to think she has probably been searching for that since? To me that's what their relationship seems to be about... the mutual love for what they do, and the possibilities that come with that. Let’s not forget that her ex, Dalton Gomez, was a realtor.

This convo is making me think about my favorite Ari performance from 2019. It aired one month after her short engagement to Pete Davidson was called off, and two months after Mac died. It's her singing "The Wizard and I" from Wicked in Elphaba drag (Elphaba is the “wicked” witch, played by Cynthia Erivo in the upcoming film), for some special celebrating the 20th anniversary of the musical. This was early in that messy-but-healing Thank U, Next era. In this performance you can see the love she has for her craft lifting her up with each note. And the way she breaks into this genuine smile when she hits the very last note....five years later and I still can’t watch it without crying! I hope this is the feeling her new relationship brings her.

MA: That The Cut piece was a mess. I’m not surprised she’s dating him. He’s everything you said and of course a lot more that we’ll never know. Why do people have to be so weird about this? Maybe it’s age. I care less and less about that stuff. She is finding out how to be happy and that means trying different things, and I think you're right, they seem to have a lot in common. Good for her.

I had never seen that performance of “The Wizard and I.” Oh man - this is exactly the era that makes me feel so tender toward her. I can see her finding hope here, and having to put some real effort into getting there. It’s such a cliche, but it really is such an immense gift to have her kind of talent, and not just for giving away to others.

CD: Don’t you feel like this is such a Glinda album? It's like the kind of music her Wicked character would make if she were a pop star. It feels theatrical and classic with all of the 90s throwback r&b... I consider Max Martin "classic pop" now I guess. It's all giving Glinda the good witch. She really is just leaning into the musical theater of it all— another "costume" of this era, perhaps! 

MA: The only Glinda I’m actually familiar with is the OG from the Wizard of Oz. Is Glinda from Wicked basically the same? I just did a very cursory Google search and the only thing that could hold my attention was the first image that popped up on the Glinda Wiki. It’s an illustration by John R. Neill from The Marvelous Land of Oz. It reminds me a little of the 9 of Pentacles tarot card. She’s in what looks like a secret, candle lit room surrounded by books while she reads from a huge one. And she has the deflated airbag sleeves like Ari’s Oscars gown. And there’s a page or something guarding outside the door, but he’s lost in a book. It’s so rich and cozy, and it’s a private, independent moment of fulfillment. This illustration actually feels more like eternal sunshine than any of the other Glinda’s I’ve seen. I feel like she’s taken this dreamy, cozy energy and sprinkled it with the flourishes and 90s sass you’re talking about, and the result is sweet and flirty and effervescent, but still strong.

The 9 of Pentacles feels like a perfect card for this album, actually. It’s about stability, safety, success, creature-comforts, independence, harmony. The woman on the card is surrounded by the fruits of her labor and holds a falcon—a powerful, focused bird. In the cards I use, the bird is hooded, which I think suggests a mastery or harnessing of that power. I don’t think Ari, or anyone, will ever be totally stable. I don’t think that’s an achievable state, because life is fundamentally uncertain, but something about eternal sunshine feels grounded and wise, like she’s at peace:

From “yes, and?”: 

“My tongue is sacred, I speak upon what I like

Protected, sexy, discerning with my time, my time

Your energy is yours and mine is mine

What's mine is mine”

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