Ariana Grande Looks to ‘Brighter Days Ahead’

Michel Gondry’s 2004 masterwork Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ends with one word: “Okay.”

It’s a simple resignation that serves as a coda to the tumultuous liaison between its two protagonists, Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski, signaling a new beginning to their story. Over two decades later, Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead closes out with an “I do,” an equally simple yet more irreverent declaration to cap off one of music’s most enduring tropes, the divorce album.

Mournful Yet Hopeful: The Sound of Brighter Days Ahead

Even more pointedly, the piano-driven “Hampstead” flips the loved-up 2020’s Positions closer “pov” on its head with a defiant and poignant conclusion: “I’d rather be seen and alive than dying by your point of view,” suggesting that beyond the end of an affair and the start of a new one, the most important relationship, after all, is with oneself.

Although commonly described and remembered for its memory-erasing plot, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in actuality charts an entire arc of recollection, of piecing back the scattered puzzle of memory. Similarly, Eternal Sunshine the album, both in its initial and revamped incarnations, marks an act of remembering what was lost, what was gained, and more importantly, what to look forward to.

Brighter Days Ahead’s lead single “Twilight Zone” succinctly encapsulates this convergence, wherein Grande intones her confusion, disillusionment, and ultimately, detachment over her dissolved union and once again chalks it down to the simplest, most cutting resolution: “Sometimes I just can’t believe you happened.”

Musically, it also doubles down on the ethereal, synth-laden excursion that characterizes the bulk of Eternal Sunshine, most famously in the set’s second single and biggest hit, “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)”. In it, Grande’s crystalline soprano glides over an icy, plodding synth lines that quietly soar and gently plummet in the vein of coolly earnest indie pop outfits such as CHVRCHES and Now, Now.

I daresay this sonic redirection is something of a revelation — perhaps even revolution — in Grande’s oeuvre, which, for the better half of her career, was treading water in swagged-out R&B, reaching its culmination in the trap-heavy Positions.

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In one of my last Jakarta hangouts, I found myself at another coffee shop (yes, coffee culture is an Indonesian thing) with a friend. We bonded over being at a crossroads in life: confused about where to go next, clearly unhappy with our respective states of affairs, yet still very much wounded, if not paralyzed, by past pains and betrayals. He’s a Scorpio Sun and Moon and I’m a Scorpio Rising after all, years removed from our Saturn Returns. Shit had gotten way, way too real.

As I wandered around the spacious and increasingly emptied out café, “I Wish I Hated You” — to me, and also to Grande herself, the emotional centerpiece of Eternal Sunshine — began blaring from the speakers.

I was stopped in my tracks. It was past midnight and pouring rain, the droplets on the broad window pane, slightly blurred as the temperature lowered inside and outside the venue, and the ambient lighting faultlessly reflecting the track’s hazy, twinkly production. One might even say it was … supernatural.

By this point, the album had only been out for a couple of weeks, I was still reeling from yet another one that was a lesson instead of a lover, and it was just a couple of days prior to my life-affirming Bali trip. I inched away from my friend as tears stealthily welled up. 

“Our shadows stand in a parallel plane / Just two different endings…”

What is grief, but love persevering? 

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Leaving “Blackiana” Behind

For many years, Grande often faced criticism over her perceived appropriation of Black culture, in the process earning her the hilarious nickname “Blackiana.”

Now that she’s doing musical theater adaptations, earning industry accolades while doing so, and sporting a more demure and mindful public image — essentially embodying how a White entertainer is “supposed to” look, sound, and act — the Blackiana reappraisal is on the rise, as is criticism over her voice change. Can a girl ever catch a break?

It was in fact the voice change that stood out during my first listen of Eternal Sunshine over a year ago: gone was the nasal, syrupy vocal styling that colored Grande’s earlier releases, as were the endless “yuh”s that earmarked her peak era in the late 2010s. In its place a more reassured, refined tone with proper enunciation (another frequent criticism leveled at her in bygone eras) that sealed the deal on the fact that she is, indeed, the leading pop vocalist of her generation.  

What I find more impressive about the full-length, however, is its surprising lack of woe-is-me-ism.

“You fucked it up! It’s all your fault!” histrionics typically found in divorce albums are kept largely at bay in Eternal Sunshine. Instead, tongue-in-cheek moments are aplenty: the colorful ways that Grande refers to her marriage, the accidental tie-in with a viral moment (“Can you hold the space I require?” she inquires in between the percolating strums and thrums of “Warm”), Blackiana throwbacks (the boom-bap joyride of “The Boy Is Mine” and the deliciously jazzy “Dandelion”), and even literal laughter (the intro of the title track, which houses the album’s most vicious line: “Hope you feel alright when you’re in her.”).

I suppose it is comparatively less tricky to wipe the slate clean after a short-lived liaison with no children involved. Or perhaps this is just what a late millennial/early Zoomer divorce album sounds like, rife with therapy talk and astrological references.

All things considered, Eternal Sunshine is a level-headed meditation on a conscious uncoupling set to a dreamy, synth-heavy soundscape that fits Grande’s light, feathery voice like a glove. Now that she has lived out even more rhythm and blues, there’s a lived-in quality to her vocal performances that’s not only technically impressive but also emotionally resonant. In a way, she’s a more soulful singer now than she ever was, even with a pivot to a pure pop sound.

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Is Eternal Sunshine Grande’s best album? Not quite, even its artwork is mid at best. Is songwriting among Grande’s strongest suits? Not necessarily, but her pen game serves its purpose just fine. Have the big pop sensibilities of Grande’s previous releases been significantly pared down despite pop titan Max Martin helming the production? Yes, and?

When it comes down to it, Eternal Sunshine is a marker of a healing era, with palpable artistic growth and character development, providing dollops of emotional catharsis for its maker and listeners to justify its existence and render its importance. Healing, lest we forget, is non-linear, teeming with two setbacks for every progress; it is ugly, brutal, and unrelenting but also comforting and reassuring in the knowledge that after a rock bottom, there really is no other way to go but up. Life. Death. Rewind.