Ariana Grande has revealed she touched on her recent “heartbreak” when putting together her new album Eternal Sunshine.
The Grammy winner is currently gearing up for the release of her seventh studio album, which is her first to be released since splitting from her ex-husband, estate agent Dalton Gomez.
During a new in-depth interview with The Zach Sang Show, Ariana shared that while some of her new material touches on her own personal circumstances, none of her new songs are intended as a “fuck you” to anyone in particular.
Referring to one track, titled Bye, Ariana said: “It wasn’t like a ‘fuck you’ at all, ever… I tried to make sure it was kind and giving credit for trying, and for the goodness that there was.”
The No Tears Left To Cry singer added that she found it a “tricky balance” to write from her own experiences while also being “protective” of herself.
“I definitely had some sessions where I was writing more emotionally and reactively. But that’s also very human. So, I didn’t want to erase all of it,” she explained.
Ariana added that her new material is intentionally both “very vague and very specific, all at once”, after an “emotional” writing process that began during a break from filming the upcoming Wicked movie.
“When I was writing, it was with no intention for the world to hear it. It was kind of like, let’s just go, let’s see what comes out,” she recalled.
“And then when I was done, I remembered that people will hear it, and that sometimes people can sensationalise things and assign meaning to certain things, and I combed through to make sure that it was what I intended which – even at my most heartbroken or most pained moments of the past few years, there was so much kindness, there was so much love, there was so much honesty and transparency and respect.
“So, even at the hardest moments of the loss and the grief that you hear on the album, some of the heartbreak stuff, there was so much love and transparency. That was something I really wanted to make sure was captured.”
Following her split from her ex-husband, Ariana has been linked to Broadway performer Ethan Slater, her co-star in Wicked, which neither party has commented on publicly.
When Zach asked if Ariana’s new album was a way of speaking to “people who’ve come to their own conclusions” about her, the singer insisted: “The thing is, we know this about the tabloids and the media… am I crazy, don’t we know this? We selectively remember that this is what the tabloids do to people – especially women – based on whether or not we like the person.
“We selectively leave space for humanness, for nuance. They don’t leave space for that – well, they do, for their friends and their family. It’s selective. But they turn it off when that aligns with the version of a person that they have in their head that they want to believe is true. But I don’t say this for them, I say it for my fans and myself.”
“I feel like we don’t need to go into any specifics, but of course there’s an insatiable frustration [and] inexplicable hellish feeling with watching people misunderstand the people you love and you,” she concluded.
Ariana previously shared her frustrating at feeling “misunderstood” in an Instagram post reflecting on the events of 2023.
“I have never felt more pride or joy or love while simultaneously feeling so deeply misunderstood by people who don’t know me, who piece whispers together and make what they want out of me and their assumptions of my life,” she told fans.
“I have learned how much more important one of those things is than the other.”
Eternal Sunshine was preceded by lead single Yes And?, in which Ariana shrugs off her many critics in her own way.
