Review: eternal sunshine (slightly deluxe) by Ariana Grande released via Republic
I’m trying to be less harsh on mainstream music this year. I’ve always sort of shut it all out, half inspired by my ex, half from adolescent bitterness. I heard some tracks of some Taylor’s Versions this year and figured maybe I was being a little harsh on top forties pop as an enterprise. When I saw a lot of mutuals enjoying this record I figured it was a good place to start.
I can appreciate this questioning of being right in where you are. The album intro, “end of the world,” is sort of a fully realized song even at a minute and a half and has Ariana wondering if the current relationship she’s in is healthy and being down on herself for asking at all. There are certainly hooks here, the chorus to “bye,” the heartfelt belting of the title track. What I’m trying to say is some of these songs do hit. “True story” has a nostalgic R&B feel and sings of the demise of a relationship. It sort of reminds me of the stuff my aunt used to have on in her house and car so it takes me back. “The boy is mine” is catchy and comes with a cool little vocal chop. My favorite on the record has got to be “imperfect for you.” This one is a low key ballad with a vintage feel and sincere sentiment. Here Ariana talks about never really being perfect for anyone but also enforces the idea of you not having to be for anyone, as long as you find someone to be imperfect with.
I think the best of the singles is “yes, and.” Here a lot of the tropes of this genre, which usually don’t appeal to me, come off really grand and hook me in. I will say, however, it’s incredibly hard to graft personal attachment and pride celebrations onto a straight artist with millions of monthly listeners. Even the sadder songs like “we can’t be friends” are a hard sell for authenticity when it’s an artist this visible and successful. I’m not at all saying rich people don’t have feelings, what I’m saying is it's crystal clear when a track is designed to have TikTok-able appeal and dampens the blow especially when it's successful. It also makes the emotional payoff on the record later on feel cheaper.
I admittedly went for the deluxe, or slightly deluxe, version of the record as it didn’t add a significant amount to the run time. New renditions, some with added features, are tacked onto the original record. I feel this is pretty par the course on a project this big and to be honest none of the additional tracks add much to the experience. Troye Sivan appears on an alternate take on “Supernatural” but ends up giving a really middling performance overall. The Mariah Carey remix of “yes, and” right at the end should feel huge but leaves me sort of bored. Like all deluxe albums with taped on features it feels like if we never heard these songs without the additional artist, it would have made it more exciting overall. What I will say is some of the different takes on these songs do demonstrate different strengths of this artist; in particular the a capella version of “True Story.” Where we get to see, yes, behind all the bells and whistles Ariana just is a good enough singer to back all of this up.
While I think eternal sunshine is a good album, I also think for me personally an album like this can never truly hit. While, yes, gay pride and disco bridges are plenty fun this type of pop is always triggering for a certain part of my upbringing. I know Twitter would have you believe artists like this are a saving grace for queer kids everywhere but for a trans woman who is thirty in 2024 and was in her teens and closeted when Lady Gaga was coming up I remember when music like this was used to gatekeep my own femininity. Every girl who bullied queer kids in school listened to music just like this. Maybe it’s petty but it's hard to detach from it all even after you’ve grown up. Or I need to let all of this go and just say “not everyone is the same type of gay!”
So, I’m not becoming an Ariana stan, probably ever, but this was a nice little detour in the year.
Our score of eternal sunshine is 7/10.
Our favorite track is track 12, imperfect for you.
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