It’s the eve of the release of Ariana Grande‘s new album ‘eternal sunshine’ and the songbird is hot on the promotional trail.
Her latest stop was Apple Music, where she sat down with Zane Lowe for an in-depth chat about the project – her first since 2020’s ‘Positions.’
Waxing candid, Grande dished on how the project came together, its incoming “bad girl anthem,” new movie ‘Wicked,’ and much more.
Watch below, where quotes also await…
On framing the album “eternal sunshine” in a more conceptual way:
“I think there’s such a freedom within art in general, because you really can pull from anywhere. You can pull from your truth, you can pull from a concept, you can pull from a film, from a story you’re telling from a story about a relationship that a friend told you. You know art, it can come from anywhere.”
On working with Max Martin and deciding how honest she should be in the lyrics:
“I’ll write like no one’s ever going to hear it ever and then sometimes I want to dial it back or change things or redo things, and [Max Martin] has got such an amazing ability to ride that balance and know what people need to hear and what I need to say too. Like, he’ll stand up for me. He’ll be like, ‘no you deserve to say that’.”
On making the album being “a very vulnerable but really fun experience”:
“For so long, I think I was hiding from it. Hiding from my success or from what comes with it. And it was really impacting my ability to be able to love what I do for a long time.
It was really making me resentful, I think, for a little bit of time and I don’t feel that anymore. I feel like I’m able to let go of that and enjoy it and I feel really proud and grateful for that. “
It was very vulnerable. I had this amazing trip in September that was just me and Max and we started these little seedling ideas, and we had a collection of beats that we liked and we wanted to expand upon and he left me with like a big folder. I would come in and try things and FaceTime when I was done and be like ‘What do you think? Is it fine? I don’t know’ and it was a very vulnerable but really fun experience. It was really special and then, of course, Max came back and we had so much fun and Ilya joined as well, and Shintaro was sending beats from afar too. So that’s kind of how it started.”
On ‘true story’ and ‘the boy is mine’:
“It’s an untrue story based on all untrue events. It sets up ‘the boy is mine’. Obviously, it’s kind of like ‘okay I’ll play the bad girl’. Now here’s your ‘Bad Girl Anthem’. That’s why they’re in that order on the tracklist.
In a way. I think I kind of was like, ‘this is a very bad idea, I think’. But there is a large group of my fans that really do love a ‘Bad Girl Anthem’ and this is kind of, I think, an elevated version of that.”
On her favorite songs on the album:
“I think my top three are: ‘we can’t be friends’, ‘imperfect for you’ and ‘eternal sunshine’. I think the most beautiful thing about ‘imperfect for you’ is that we all know those people that we feel that way about and that we are so lucky to have because they see it all, they hold space for it all and it fits in their imperfections too. Like, we’re so lucky to have friends, family, loved ones that are just so accepting and real with us, no matter what. It’s such an important song in my opinion because we live in a time where everything is boiled down. But that song kind of demands room for nuance and humanness and complexity that we’re so used to being stripped of these days.”
‘eternal sunshine’ arrives on March 8.
