Ariana Grande trades sunshine for shadows on 'Petal'

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Set us as preferred Who pissed off Ariana Grande? Well, who didn’t?On her new album, “Petal,” the pop superstar opens the spigot on what she’s described as an “unfiltered rage” to blast any number of feckless exes, a prying public obsessed with her body and her personal life — and not least herself for allowing anyone the power to hurt her in the first place.“Tell me who’s to blame — is it the people or myself?” she wonders against the icy synth stabs of the title track.Her answer, delivered as a sneering little aside: “Yeah.”“Petal” marks a dramatic shift from Grande’s previous LP, 2024’s “Eternal Sunshine,” a tender and melancholy electro-pop collection that laid out a kind of emotional philosophy of heartbreak.She recorded the new album with the same team — the hit-making writer-producers Ilya Salmanzadeh and Max Martin — but here they go for a murkier, more percussive sound to match Grande’s dark mood.Tolling electric guitar accompanies her in “Freak” as she muses on “all of the life I’ve been denied,” while “Oh Well” puts a jittery U.K.

garage beat under her sneering farewell to an unnamed antagonist: “Good luck on your way to hell.” In “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” which debuted at No.1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 when Grande released it as “Petal’s” lead single, she sings, “I’ve held your projections when you’ve felt so insecure,” over a trudging groove that moves like a funeral march.These downcast observations arrive at what would seem to be a professional high point for Grande, who recently wrapped her extended stay in the “Wicked”-verse and who’s in the middle of a tour that’s drawn adoring fans to arenas across the country.But perhaps that’s the point: Almost every song on “Petal” can be interpreted two ways — as a story...