Petal Review

Thirty six minutes, twelve songs, one producer doing most of the work. After the Wicked years and a stadium tour, Grande came back with the quietest album of her career, most of it built by Ilya Salmanzadeh out of soft keys and a great deal of space, with Max Martin on hand rather than in charge.

The writing is where it earns attention. She takes on the fans who turn up at her house, the press that has narrated her private life for a decade, and the relationships that the same press then relitigates. Hate That I Made You Love Me went to number one on both sides of the Atlantic in its first week and is the sharpest thing here.

The restraint splits opinion for a reason. Rolling Stone heard unfiltered emotion. Pitchfork heard a singer holding back the voice that used to be the whole argument, and scored it accordingly. Both are describing the same choice, and across twelve tracks it does start to sound like a setting rather than a decision. The record earned 295,000 units in week one regardless, 168,000 of them copies actually sold, her biggest week since Thank U, Next in 2019, which suggests the audience has followed her down in volume.