Ariana Grande’s temper tantrum is like being attacked by a lovely butterfly

Neil McCormickFri, July 31, 2026 at 8:03 AM UTC

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The 33-year-old’s breathy tone in Petal has all the substance of candy floss - Katia Temkin

Ariana Grande has warned fans that her new album, Petal, comes from a place of “unfiltered rage”. “It’s a little feral,” she said in a recent interview. “It’s definitely from a place I’ve been maybe too shy or polite to tap into before. This kind of just feels like, ‘F--- it.’”

Well, if you are wondering what Grande sounds like when she’s angry, try to imagine being assaulted by a particularly lovely butterfly. “Bad guys all go to hell,” she sings on Oh Well, in a breathy tone that has all the substance of candy floss. It may not help that it is set upon gauzy pillows of looped backing vocals so airy you can imagine Enya floating past in a mellow daze. It is pretty, but if it were any flimsier, you’d fear it might blow away in a light breeze.

Grande’s de facto setting throughout her stellar career has been sweetness personified. She is 5ft 1in with a voice so supple you could get a sugar rush just listening to her cascades of harmonies. Still only 33, she has been scoring massive global hits since 2013, her multimillion sales and multibillion streams making her one of the blockbuster superstars of our time.

‘It’s definitely from a place I’ve been maybe too shy or polite to tap into before,’ says Grande of Petal

She is probably the most technically gifted contemporary pop singer, with command of a four-octave range that extends into the whistle register. Yet you would be hard pressed to tell that from her seventh studio album, where the lead vocals are mixed so low, and her singing is so intimate, it is as if all the music surrounding it has had to be softened just so that she can be heard.

Even then, you might struggle to decipher what she’s getting worked up about without a lyric sheet. Grande has a very modern tendency to slip through multiple notes in any given syllable while discarding the consonants, so that a word as simple as “alright” on Nowhere, Nobody sounds like: “ah-ee-ah-ee-ay-ah-eh”. Perhaps this is a reaction to her recent starring role in the blockbuster Wicked movies. If those films showed off her lung power, Broadway-style emoting and enunciation, Petal focuses on breath control.

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Grande has described Petal as a “very experimental” album, which might be an excuse for an absence of strong pop hooks. It dials up the electronic sci-fi RnB atmospherics that came to the fore on her previous three albums (which all did blockbuster business) with delicate clickety-clack drum machines and sprinkles of random percussive synth noises, yet it is all very luxurious and seductive rather than challenging.

Grande’s starring role in the Wicked movies particularly show off her lung power - Universal Pictures via AP

Production and writing duties have been shared by Grande with regular collaborator Ilya Salmanzadeh, while hitmaker Max Martin comes on board for a handful of more structurally potent songs, including the album’s unstoppable lead single Hate That I Made You Love Me and title track Petal.

You have to really concentrate to notice, but there is a hint of Grande’s unleashed ire on that song, although “fury” would be way too strong a descriptive. “Mild irritation” might be better. “Why you so hate to see women endure? / Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts of your own accord,” she sings, in what appears to be a dig at the sense of ownership imposed on artists by demanding fans.

The title track goes deeper into the tribulations of fame and creativity. “All of my favourite stories end in some kind of catastrophe,” sings Grande. “But I don’t need someone to save me / This music and I will never die.” It’s a bold statement, set to an interesting arrangement with hints of the dark grandeur of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, only slightly undermined by the fact that Grande delivers these lines like she’s afraid to wake the neighbours.

Petal is the kind of album you have to lean into to pick through the subtle sonic details, and unravel the lyrics and emotions, with each play bringing the songs into closer focus. But as ever with Grande, the singing is worth the price of admission alone. I am not sure it is what she intended, but Grande’s tiny temper tantrum is actually kind of lovely.

Petal is out now

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”