Listening to pop music in 2024 may feel the same way. In the age of streaming, we remain overwhelmed by choice, which often makes the simplest forms of engagement feel like abandonment. Perhaps that's why superfans now readily call their favorite singers “mother,” while simultaneously imagining them as their hero, or their queen, or even some kind of god. Here's the complicated part we're all supposed to forget: Pop superstars are not only grace-worthy people, but also wealthy people, worthy of scrutiny. In an increasingly unequal world, capitalism's promise of infinite growth flows through today's population like a polluted river, and as we continue to encourage our richest megastars by imposing slices of As taxes rise even higher, brain damage begins to become a problem.
Now here comes Ariana Grande with a charming new album that wants to squeeze your brain with a stealth you might not even feel. She called it “Eternal Sunshine,” which, in a nod to Gondry’s film, presents the whole thing as a sort of puzzle. Yes, Grande's recent romantic turmoil has been completely turned into a pile of clickable digital gossip, but unlike her signature naming 2019 breakup anthem, “Thanks, Next“, she chose to keep the lyrics vague in these new songs, using the consummate sweetness of her voice to obscure the details of a bruised heart. Has our hero suffered the memory wipe she talks about in the title song? Or is she carrying out the procedure on us?
Strap in and we'll start with what 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 these same words in 1998. When you hear Grande cooing to the disco gallop of “We can't be friends (wait for your love)“, you will remember dancing alone to Robyn”Dancing alone” in 2010. When you hear the friendly, pop-house thud of “Yes and?“, you will return to the indelible thrill of “Madonna”Vogue“around 1990 (and when you see Grande's music video, you'll remember its inspiration, the “Cold heart“, from a year earlier). If you check the credits, you'll keep seeing Max Martin, which means you'll remember the multitude of millennial megahits the Swedish singing colossus helped write for Britney Spears, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys and others.
These are all considered understated influences, but Grande sings them in a way that makes time blur, the softer edges of her voice giving everything on “Eternal Sunshine” either a mellow sweetness or a warmth of bathtub. This music is extremely inviting, with melodies that follow the general contours of R&B, but without any agony, without any messy human catharsis to clean up afterwards. Instead, Grande's careful vocal staccato is the musical mechanism most worth paying attention to – a beautifully breathy phrasing tactic that evokes the brakes. It's as if Grande is repeatedly asking us to stop and situate ourselves in the present moment, or better yet, savor it. During the expert chorus of “The Boy Is Mine,” listen to how she inserts tiny dashes of silence between these words: “Watch me take my time.” It's like she's creating time.
And if being here now is Grande's way of forgetting the past, “Eternal Sunshine” honors her conceit. She firmed up the line between person and character while blurring the line between music and listener. There's no headache to be had, unless you want to bang your head on this album's latent paradox: when it's so easy to get into the music, it's just as easy to get out of it. to go out. Every beat is frictionless, every melody is smooth, every reference feels deeply familiar, and when it's all over, you might not remember anything at all.