Ariana Grande’s "Petal" is Not The Enraged Album Everyone is Making it Out to Be

Petal, Ariana Grande’s album of “unfiltered rage”, is not so unfiltered.

Ariana Grande is already an anomaly on my list of favorite artists, considering that I’m a lyrics girl and she’s best known for her vocal work. I was curious, going into my first listen of petal, to hear the “unfiltered rage” Grande has spoken of throughout its rollout. I was disappointed when I finished it. Where was the anger?

The album cover for petal by Ariana Grande

It’s not entirely that the concept is absent. Perception of “unfiltered rage” is subjective. As is sound preference – petal is almost entirely rooted in synths and minor keys, which I found redundant and unappetizing. I rarely enjoy listening to multiple synth-heavy songs in a row, and I’m a major key girlie through and through. This ominous mystical production was my only indication that Grande wasn’t lying about the rage displayed. But still, this production drowned out the lyrics, so I turned to Genius.com with hope. Grande may not specialize in lyrics, but I wouldn’t say she lacks in them. However, I made an overcompensating mistake in assuming she’d use lyrics as a crutch.

“Oh Well”, quoting the promoted lyric, “Good luck on your way to hell”, has the intention of rage. She sings, “I play all the parts that I’m supposed to, right? And I just throw a Band-Aid on my whole damn life”. Then, she states in the second verse of the title track, “I am not the victim, bitch, I’m practically drowning in my blessings/it’s bye, this time, for real”. Cursing and use of personification indicate that her feelings are too strong to be expressed in a literal style, but they’re still too eloquent to sell “unfiltered” and too similar to older lyrics (see “Bye”, from eternal sunshine) to be novel. Plus, both of those tidbits are immediately followed by deeper figurative lyrics. Is rage really unfiltered if it only lasts for two sentences?

“Warning Signs (Interlude)” takes the approach of making listeners feel empathetic, “My pain is music, do you hear me everywhere? …Monday, I got you all over me/you love me like ecstasy, make me see colors I haven’t seen for a while/but Friday, you’re suddenly ghosting me”. I mean… I know I would be enraged, but is she, really? This interlude may be better lyrically and sonically at conveying fury than most other petal songs, but it still doesn’t add much.

At this point, you may be wondering what I want her to say. But this is about how I want her to make me feel. I want her to make me feel angry, and instead I feel sympathetic.

Searching for other interpretations, I read a few short blurbs from media outlets. So, this album revolves around the internet’s perception of Grande? Now that’s intriguing, but I’m not seeing much evidence of that in the lyrics. “There’s No Ariana Grande Like Pissed-Off Ariana Grande”, says Rolling Stone? They’re right – there truly doesn’t seem to be a pissed-off Ariana Grande, at least not here.

Ariana Grande, photo by Katia Temkin

On the more romantic side of the album, there’s an improvement in sound. The flat melody from opener “Kiss Me”, where Grande is waiting for the end of a relationship avoidantly, turns into something greater in “Stay”, where Grande waits for the end anxiously. The sounds of these two songs, reminding me of Camila Cabello’s Romance (2019) album, make me think I would’ve liked this album more if it came out in the late 2010s. The beat in the opening track already feels similar enough to that of Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s “This Is What You Came For” (2016).

There are a couple seductive ominous songs that further improve the album after the flat-falling “enraged” tracks. They take a page from Grande’s 2020 positions album. Even as she navigates the emotions of an ongoing messy relationship, she admits wild, flirty, and gross things like, “Pussy so sweet a tear fell from his eye” and “I can become so aquatic, come swim in these waters” (“Big Feelings”). She adds, with a vengeful tone, “You need me like I you, cause no one fucks you like I do” (“Like I Do”) and becomes further detached in “Never Get Over Me”.

Grande ends with love songs, which, while great, are the cherry on top of my confusion with the emotional intentions of this album. “Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)” is like Sabrina Carpenter’s 2025 track “When Did You Get Hot?”, but predictably more pessimistic: “Have you been this fine the whole damn time? This is a bad thing”. “Nowhere, Nobody”, the closer and my personal favorite, is a relaxed song that uses rawer instrumentals as she sings lovingly, “Deep breaths, honey, there’s no more running/and there’s nowhere, with nobody else that I’d rather be.”

After all this clawing and decoding, I really do wish I understood this album. I’ve been enraged at the media on Grande’s behalf for years. She’s torn apart over her body, her choices (especially the ones that don’t affect anyone in the general public), her voice, everything. I wish I could hear the pissed-off person everyone is talking about.

I don’t think this will ever sit anywhere near the top of my ranking of Grande’s albums, but I really hope and believe some of these songs will grow on me. You can listen to petal on all streaming platforms now. Buy tickets to the remaining shows of the Eternal Sunshine Tour here.

Ariana Grande performing at the June 6 Oakland date of the Eternal Sunshine Tour, photo by Katia Temkin