It seems like the sun never quite sets on Ariana Grande. Between her own music and her role in “Wicked,” the 31-year-old singer-songwriter and actress has been working overtime in the spotlight. Friday, Grande released a deluxe version of her 2024 album, “eternal sunshine,” accompanied with a 26-minute short film building off the storyline from the album’s previous music video.
Grande’s original release of “eternal sunshine” in March 2024 came after a three-year hiatus from releasing music. In the album, she unpacks her divorce with ex-husband Dalton Gomez and new controversial relationship with “Wicked” co-star Ethan Slater. More deeply, she addressed her personal journey amidst constant criticism and societal pressures to produce the lighthearted pop music people expect of her. The 2024 album is a blend of all of these complex emotions as well as some of the upbeat pop hits people expect from her, as she told Rolling Stone in 2024.
“eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead” dives even deeper into this journey for Grande, a beautiful and well-fitting addition to an already well-rounded work. The album features the original 13 song track list with an additional six songs, one being an extended version of the album’s opening track.
The first bonus track — “intro (end of the world) - extended” — adds to the album’s opener more context about how Grande feels toward her ex-husband. Grande tackles the realization that she needs to end her marriage amidst catching feelings for another person. She sings, “I broke your heart because you broke mine / so not to me, I am the bad guy,” suggesting that the breakup was more nuanced than the media has portrayed it, and she feels remorse for how it ended, despite being in a new relationship.
A reflective standout in the addendum was the second new track, “twilight zone.” In a tone akin to “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” — one of the most popular songs off the album’s original release — Grande talks about her previous marriage and looks back on it as somewhat of a distant memory. In the refrain, she manages to sum up the feeling, “Not that I miss you, I don’t / sometimes I just can’t believe you happened.”
Bringing in the driving pop beat many know her for, Grande added in “dandelion,” an upbeat, seductive song. The song starts out with an interesting trumpet solo, which Grande then lays over a uniquely ”Positions” dance beat. In this moment, Grande fully leans back into her pop princess identity, with stacked harmonies and a driving bass. Perhaps she even acknowledges this tonal shift from the previous songs, singing “I get this sounds unserious, / but baby boy, this is serious.” While similar in sound to Grande’s previous albums, she approaches “dandelion” with a lighter energy and airier tone that fits well into the texture of this record.
“Hampstead,” perhaps the emotional standout of the entire 19 song album, comes at the very end, an unmistakably sincere ending an album like “eternal sunshine” needed. The song starts with just Grande, a piano and background noise of a pub in Hampstead, London — the place she lived while filming “Wicked” — as she sings sincerely and directly to her fans and critics. “Threw away my reputation but saved us more heartache / … But quite frankly, you’re still wrong about everything,” Grande sings. She finds a beautiful way to encapsulate the feeling of separating people’s perceptions of her from her truth.
The most beautifully sincere line provides a full circle moment for Grande and her growth — “I’d rather be seen and alive, than dying by your point of view.” This line is possibly a reference to her previous song, “pov,” which she wrote about her then new relationship with Gomez, singing the words “I’d love to see me from your point of view.”
Grande did not stop with just these songs. The artist accompanied the tracks by producing and starring in a 26-minute short film released on YouTube entitled “brighter days ahead,” following the character Peaches, one she created in her “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” music video. The woman medically erases her painful memories, as in the 2004 film her album is named after — “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
In this short film, Peaches is now an old woman, portrayed by Grande in a wheelchair, elderly prosthetics and hearing aids. She chooses to relive four of her memories before they disappear forever, each one set to songs from “eternal sunshine.” One of these dark memories include Grande as a Frankenstein-like figure torn apart by an unknown mad scientist character — perhaps a commentary on how she is torn apart by people’s perceptions of her, her relationships and her deservingness of the spotlight.
Grande chooses to end the film with a video of her younger self quoting Kristin Chenoweth — the original Glinda in “Wicked” and one of Grande’s role models — from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” saying we must “live each day as if it were the last day of our life.” This moment marks a choice to live outside of the crushing perception of others, not wasting time on the insignificant things, as memory is finite.
“eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead” managed to further elevate Grande’s emotional vulnerability, growth and production prowess, in both her music and film. One thing is for certain, fans should never underestimate Grande’s ability to get real.
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