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Listening to pop music in 2024 may seem the same. In the age of streaming, we continue to be overwhelmed by options and often make the easiest ways to participate feel like a surrender. Perhaps this is why superfans now resolutely refer to their favorite singers as “mother” while simultaneously imagining them as their heroine, their queen, or even some kind of god. Here’s the tricky part we’re all supposed to forget: Pop superstars are simply people worthy of grace, but also rich people, worthy of scrutiny. In an increasingly unequal world, capitalism’s foolish promise of infinite growth flows through today’s pop like a polluted river, and as we continue to encourage our richest megastars to reach even higher tax brackets, the brain damage begins. to seem the point.
Now Ariana Grande arrives with a charming new album that wants to squeeze your brain with a stealth you may not even feel. She titled it “Eternal Sunshine,” which, in a nod to Gondry’s film, frames the whole thing as a kind of either/or puzzle. Yes, Grande’s recent romantic turbulence has been completely covered in reams of clickable digital gossip, but unlike her signature 2019 breakup anthem, which she named names, “Thanks, next” has chosen to keep the lyrics vague on these new songs, using the consummate softness of her voice to obscure the details of a bruised heart. Has our hero suffered the memory wipe he talks about in the title song? Or is he performing the procedure on us?
Buckle up and we’ll get started on the things Grande wants us to remember. When you hear his falsetto hydroplane to the rhythm of “The boy is Mine”, you will remember Brandy and Monica singing those same words back in 1998. When you hear Grande coo over the disco beat of “We can’t be friends (wait for your love)“, you will remember dancing alone to Robyn’s rhythm”Dancing alone” in 2010. When you hear the friendly pop-house thump of “Yes, and?”, you will remember the indelible chill of “Madonna”Fashion“circa 1990 (and when you watch Grande’s music video, you’ll remember her inspiration, Paula Abdul)Cold heart“, from a year earlier). If you scroll through the credits, you’ll still see Max Martin, which means you’ll remember the slew of millennial megahits the Swedish songwriter colossus helped write for Britney Spears, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and others.
They all qualify as low influences, but Grande sings through them in ways that make time blur, the softer edges of her voice giving everything on “Eternal Sunshine” whether a pillow-like softness or the warmth of a bathtub. This music is extremely engaging, with melodies that follow the general contours of R&B, but with no agony, no messy human catharsis to clean up afterward. Instead, Grande’s orderly staccato vocals are the musical device most worth paying attention to: a beautifully staccato phrasing tactic that evokes the slap of brakes. It’s as if Grande is repeatedly asking us to stop and put ourselves in the right now, or better yet, to savor it. During the expert hook of “The Boy Is Mine,” listen as he inserts little hints of silence between these words: “Watch me take my time.” It’s like he’s creating time.
And if being here now is Grande’s way of forgetting the past, “Eternal Sunshine” delivers on her vanity. He has reaffirmed the line between person and person while blurring the line between music and listener. You won’t feel any headaches, unless you want to bang your head on this album’s latent paradox: when it seems so easy to get into the music, it’s just as easy to get out of it. Every beat feels frictionless, every melody feels smooth, every reference feels deeply familiar, and when it’s all over, you might not remember any of it.