Ariana Grande reveals a different side to herself on Petal.
The 33-year-old singer wrote her 12-track album from a place of “unfiltered rage”, and she thinks the unkind and more direct music will bring “familiarity and comfort” to her fans.
On Wednesday, Apple Music posted a clip of Ariana discussing Petal on Instagram, in which she said: “I’m equally excited to see how they react to every single song.
“I think they’ll feel familiarity and comfort in it because it pulls from many different parts of myself and yet, at the same time, it is very experimental and different for me. I wrote from a place that I don’t usually, which was like an unfiltered rage that I think we all feel sometimes.
“I usually am too shy to tap into that. This time, I didn’t filter as much as I usually do. I usually do a lot of rewrites and make things a little kinder, a little less direct.
“But this time, I didn’t, and I think they’ll be excited by that. I hope they love it.”
Ariana’s self-penned song Hate That I Made You Love Me is the lead single on Petal, and ahead of the track’s release back in May, she declared that the raw, mid-tempo song is “one of my favourite songs I’ll ever write”.
The star sings on the pre-chorus: “Just know that I will find my way from you.
“Like flowers from a tomb while you decide who you are.
“And I can see right through, ooh-ooh, like shadows on the moon.
“And it’s all bad news.”
Also in May, Ariana revealed Petal is “a little feral”, and said its tracks come from a place she has been “too shy or polite to tap into before” and it is about tackling the “monsters” in her head.
In a video posted on Instagram, Ariana explained her eighth studio album’s concept, saying: “Surprise! It’s called Petal. It’s basically about something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.
“It’s kind of about breaking up with all different kinds of negative attachments, whether it’s my own monsters in my own head, external voices, things that no longer serve me.
“It was a writing experiment for me to use that as a template so that I could be talking about one thing and sharing something, and people could use it however they want and apply it to their own lives.”
She went on to add: “It’s a little feral as well. It’s definitely from a place where I have been maybe too shy or polite to tap into before and this kind of just feels like, f*** it.”
Ariana released her last album, Eternal Sunshine, in March 2024, and the record featured a number of hit singles, including We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love), Yes, And?, and The Boy Is Mine.
Eternal Sunshine debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and became the longest-running number one album of her career.