putting this under read more so if you don't know how to be normal about a discussion of reputation (the album) or ariana grande (if you choose to read it'll make sense, i promise) you can just keep scrolling
i had an epiphany today when thinking about the artistic exercise of Eternal Sunshine, ari's new album, which was not an epiphany about it's execution. that much is very clear and i enjoyed very much upon first listen, but if you want a refresher is this: after a very publicly broadcast and discussed personal scandal, the dissolution of her short-lived marriage and her appearing as the romantic entanglement in someone else's marriage dissolution, the interested general public was hotly anticipating her next album. they had expectations that she would discuss/confess/air her dirty laundry about these events, as she is a semi-autobiographical and confessional songwriter and performer, at least when it comes to her most prolific personal affairs. these expectations were brought to higher levels of titillation when she named the album after the titular movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I won't get into the plot as you can use google if you don't know and didn't have the pleasure of having your brain exploded as a teenager watching that in a college dorm room, but everyone of course anticipated the relationship that she would be exorcizing from her memory would be that of her ex husband. Ariana, knowing full well this is what people were going into her album expecting, decided to play with these expectations in a particularly fun bait and switch game artists of all kinds are known to do on occasion. first with the lead single, which is an interestingly offensive approach, scolding news and media outlets for talking about her life and judging it without knowing her. then if you've listened to the album, you of course realized very quickly that while there are a few songs where she starts off by giving the audience what they wanted (be it the bad behavior anthem the boy is mine or ex diss tracks like boy bye and the title track), the lead single was perhaps more of the central focus of the album after all. Songs that begin talking about liars and breakups soon weave contradictory elements in (wait she will wait for their love? i thought they broke up? situationship? weren't they married?) and depending on your self awareness, at least by the end you realize that perhaps a large chunk of the album was not about her jilted lovers or current messy romantic life, but about you. the fan, the critic, the audience writ large. songs like true story where you think it's about her lying ex husband, but by the time you get halfway in, you realize oh wait... perhaps its about more than one thing, or something else entirely... perhaps the ones "fantasizing about her demise" and the ones who "pay to see play the scene" are her audience. to whom she is biting and vindictive in her martyrdom, being whatever the public wants her to be so she can keep that love, because attention is still love in the eyes of a pop star. songs like we can't be friends play with that expectation that you think it will be about her ex husband or the early stages of her sneaking around with her new beau, but no, it is about how fraught her relationship is with her fans and audience. how pop stars do not have actual "friendly" relationships with said fans because of how fickle and superficial they are, how little these fans/audiences really know her at all due to the triple-paned window between them, but how desperate pop stars are for the love of those hands pressed against the glass. she slips in these fraught emotions and turmoil amongst the gossip you gobble, a little sugar to help the medicine go down in a way. But not too finger wagging, as often it's hard to tell what the song is truly about. all you know is it's not as simple as "my ex husband sucks." She knew all eyes and ears would be on this album and toyed with the listener to the point where she got them to listen to her airing her grievances to them about themselves, pay her even to hear it. a delicious little feat.
and of course by now you know where i'm headed, which is we know someone who did something quite similar. had a public scandal, understood the expectations of her, a singer/songwriter, releasing an album after said scandal and toyed with the expectations of that audience with that album. one she cheekily named reputation, doing the opposite of what ari did. where ari played into the promise of a gossipy album about her relationships but turned it into a confessional meditation on fame and the ups and downs of what it's like to be a popstar, taylor promised that discussion by titling it reputation, but her bait and switch was that she ended up telling you gossip about her new relationship. like ESotSM, reputation does dabble in what was promised up front, but as gleaned by listening yourself and as proclaimed by the artist herself, the album ultimately was more interested in gabbing about her newfound happiness where you expected fraught sadness.
this is not a discussion about which one is more "successful" if you can even quantify that. you can't really, outside of capitalist metrics which as we know are not arbiters of taste or quality. (and personally i'm way more interested in hearing the rarely revealed musings of a pop star wrestling with the way they've shackled their self worth to public opinion and fame, rather than hearing some girl talk about another one of her boyfriends. so it's no secret which one i find more artistically stimulating lol). but more of an epiphany that these two women, under similar duress of having their narratives taken from them, lives judged without any grace given, resorted to the same tactic. regaining control in what small way they could, luring people in with the bait of gossip and pop stars self flagellation that they so cravenly desired and force feeding them something else once they'd waded too far in to turn back. startlingly self indulgent and vindictive for someone who's job it is to appeal to as many people as possible, which makes it so curious to me.
Most interesting to me is the conclusion of both of these creative and pseudo-therapeutic endeavors. While taylor claimed to have found peace and refuge from the thirst for public approval (although you could argue that metatexuauly, the release of an album about it, the subsequent massive tour, and her obvious devastation on grammy nomination day as depicted in MA say otherwise), Ariana comes to a similar conclusion in her three closing tracks. first, i wish i hated you which is the piece de resistance in this experiment in dubiousness, as it offers two readings impossible to irrefutably confirm. a song that quietly and beautifully speaks about a dissolution without any obvious wrongdoer or wrongdoing. just a natural drifting apart and how hating them would be easier than accepting some things just don't work, no rhyme or reason. in what sounds like one take, refreshingly tactile in sound and her breath catching towards the end, is this ariana bearing her truth about her divorce finally? confessing that sorry to disappoint, but there is no "tea" or drama, just two adults who weren't right for each other and mature enough to know that and part amicably? or is this about you? us? the pursuit of fame and the connection to an audience she tried so hard to achieve and enjoy, but has realized that it just isn't right for her? her choice to step back and away from the love she has come to want so desperately, but knows isn't good for her, despite not being able to find it in her heart to hate her fans/audience as much as she secretly wants to? It's followed up by imperfect for you which argues the opposite. is this about her new yellow rectangular beau who takes her with all her flaws as she is? does she feel understood by him and has found peace in him? or was the previous one truly about her husband and this one is about her fans and audience, who she feels love her despite her messiness and bad behavior and imperfections, to say the least? are they both about the audience? or neither? they allow room for both, purposefully so, and she's taken to not really talking about in detail it at all, perhaps an answer in and of itself.
the closing track ultimately ends in the same place as taylor. less of an answer but a discovery of peace with the reality of it all. for ariana, ordinary days is once again elusive in it's subject, as it talks about how she has found comfort in the subject with whom there are never going to be "ordinary days." is this a person? her family perhaps, as her grandmother is pointedly featured at the end? or is this once again about her fraught relationship with her fans, for whom she can credit for making no day ordinary ever again, as they have made her extraordinary with their adulation and love? and is she saying for better or worse, happy or sad, it's never ordinary and that's what makes it all worth it in the end? her grandmother's speech that caps off the album is rather contradictory to everything ariana has done in her romantic life thus far. among other things, she says "I mean, I could have packed up and left a million times, you know? It's not that we never fought, you can overcome that, you know?" We just listened to a whole album about how she did leave and didn't overcome the problems in her marriage.... or did we listen to her talk about her relationship to us, the listener, and how she didn't leave fame behind and despite the turmoil, constant and never ending and never tipped in her favor, she is choosing to overcome it every time... once again?it's hard to know as always with art, but it's a path laid out for you to choose as you wish. another question to answer the initial question on the album that she poses in track one, less to us and more to herself. She asks "How can I tell if I'm in the right relationship... If the moon went dark tonight and it all ended tomorrow, would I be the one on your mind?... and if it all ended tomorrow, would you be the one on mine?" Her and taylor (when they point to the pictures, please tell them my name // i'm still trying everything to get you looking at me) and Beyoncé (the legacy, if it's the last thing I do. you'll remember me) and all anointed pop stars probing the same question. not asking us if we will remember them, but asking themselves if the pursuit of that immortality is worth all of it, the self-crucifixion of fame. is this what they're going to choose? is she going to erase us from her memory or are we going to be her great love despite our fickle nature and the guaranteed pain and suffering? The album, much like the movie, offers no clear answer as to what the right choice is, or that she's even capable of being someone who could dole out such wisdom, but ultimately decides maybe there is no choice at all. we can't go back. we are all moths to one flame or another, forever changed by what we do and what we become. a non-answer that i had never really thought about before, that instead interrogates the very question as something worth asking in the first place. which perhaps it isn't. we do what we do because we must, so at least don't do it alone.
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