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On “Past Life,” the penultimate track of “Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead,” Ariana Grande admits that she’s ready to move on from the divorce that cast a shadow over her seventh album. “Might fuck around and elevate my expectations,” she sings. “Now I’m fine to leave you in a past life.”
Grande has had many past lives — millions have seen them play out in real time — and the way that she confronts them is largely what made 2024’s “Eternal Sunshine” such a confessional epiphany. That album was her most insular and emotionally evocative to date, examining the pain of a very public divorce and the optimism of a very public new relationship. She named it after Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a 2004 film whose protagonists only realize the value of their romance while (literally) erasing it. The film concludes on a cautiously upbeat note, suggesting that the hopefulness of new love could exempt you from the pain of past blunders — or doom you to repeat them.
That inspiration was much of the charm of “Eternal Sunshine,” an album filled with songs aware of what went wrong and, subsequently, what’s going right. Grande is one of the more forthcoming pop stars we have, at least since 2018’s “Sweetener,” when she began using her music to process what she experiences in the public eye. It’s placed her in a class of pop music’s most under-appreciated songwriters, consistently matching concept with execution, and what gave “Eternal Sunshine” the type of heft that only the best therapy-pop can provide.
“Brighter Days Ahead” doesn’t so much step out of the boundaries of “Eternal Sunshine” as it does enhance what’s already there. Grande is in a dying breed of A-list musicians who value the art of album-making, and that much is clear by how aligned the six new songs (five-and-a-half, really, since one is an extended intro) are with the existing record. Across “Brighter Days Ahead,” she doesn’t offer anything strikingly different or out of step thematically and sonically; rather, it feels like a capstone on a conflicting chapter in her life, an opportunity to say things that were left unsaid and address how challenging — and restorative — it can be to face what you’ve endured.
She picks up where she left off on “Intro (End of the World) – Extended,” which transforms from a sunny opening salvo celebrating romance into a method of preservation: “I broke your heart because you broke mine / So me, I am the bad guy ’cause I’d already grieved you and you started to realize / I do need you, I did / I wish I could un-need you, so I did.” Grande deserves far more credit for the intro track choices on her records, all pitch-perfect theses (see: “Moonlight,” ‘My Everything”s “Intro”), and as a full-length version, “Intro (End of the World)” works far better as a completed thought than a truncated idea.
Each song on “Brighter Days Ahead” plays as a slight addendum to build out the “Eternal Sunshine” universe. There are no big, defiant anthems a la “Yes, And” or sassy pop missives like “The Boy Is Mine.” Instead, the tracks explore a different texture of romance with self-referential bits coded in. The ’80s-splashed “Twilight Zone” floats in a space of disbelief that her marriage actually happened, its title a nod to one of her favorite TV shows. There’s a “holding space” reference on “Warm” — “Can you hold the space I require or will you turn the page?” she asks — and “Hampstead” is inspired by the London neighborhood where she lived while filming “Wicked.”
“Hampstead” is particularly notable in its simplicity, a stripped-down ballad where it’s easy to miss how complex and rich her vocal arrangements have become over the years. The musicianship of “Brighter Days Ahead” is to its credit — Grande is as much a performer as she is a technician, if you’ve seen videos of her recording in the studio — and the new songs sound fleshy and contemplated. If anything, a Grande song is going to sound mellifluous, no matter its message.
That message happens to be rooted in a place of transition on “Eternal Sunshine,” a snapshot of Grande at an emotional crossroads, still mired by the inevitably complicated feelings that come with a divorce and the promise that a new relationship can balm them. The album was all the better for it, and “Brighter Days Ahead” teases that dichotomy out even further, showing that at one of your lowest moments, you can still find new ways to reconcile it.
