Ariana Grande has announced her eighth studio album, ‘Petal’, describing it as “full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging”.
The record is set for release on July 31 via Republic Records, and has been executive produced and co-written by Ariana Grande and Ilya. Visit here to pre-order.
It will be made available in a range of digital and physical formats, and marks the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2024’s ‘Eternal Sunshine’ and the deluxe edition, ‘Brighter Days Ahead’.
While the singer has not yet shared any singles from the record nor revealed the tracklist, she did reveal the cover artwork on social media, which is a close up shot of her smiling with her hair fanned across her face.
She also started dropping teasers to fans ahead of the announcement, sharing a cryptic video that had the caption “Petal in the pavement”, but also joking that she would need an “extra brain” to put out new music after concentrating her efforts on acting.
Now, announcing album eight, the pop star has described it simply as “Something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging”.
Ahead of the album announcement, Grande also shared a behind-the-scenes series of clips from in the studio, and the collaboration with Ilya comes following the Swedish songwriter-producer also working with the ‘One Last Time’ singer on ‘Eternal Sunshine’.
Later this year, Grande is set to kick off her 2026 tour, which will be her first since 2019 and includes a whopping 10-show residency at The O2 in London between August and September. You can find any remaining tickets here.
Around the time of the tour announcement, Grande said it would likely be her “last hurrah”.
She’s rarely played live since she completed her huge 100-show tour in 2019, only making a handful of appearances at non-profit events and award shows. She did reassure fans earlier this year, however, that she wasn’t “abandoning” music.
In November, she spoke of her “healed” relationship with music, saying that “until quite recently, it was really hard for me to navigate and I think it stripped a lot of joy out of this for me. And by the way, I have a different team now,” she said.
The comments seemed to hint at her 2023 split from longtime manager Scooter Braun, and suggested that she is now able to balance her music and acting career with less pressure.
Acting roles have included playing Glinda The Good in the Academy Award-winning Wicked and Wicked: For Good, which earned her nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and an upcoming role in Focker-In-Law – the latest instalment in the Meet The Parents franchise.
She is also being rumoured as part of the cast for the sequel of A Minecraft Movie, but this has not yet been confirmed.
In a four-star review of 2024’s ‘Eternal Sunshine’, Nick Levine wrote for NME: “It’s the most sophisticated project yet from a preternaturally talented vocalist who keeps getting better. Whatever you take away from it, ‘Eternal Sunshine’ definitely isn’t an album you’ll want to wipe from memory.”
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