Ariana Grande is already reshaping expectations around petal before the album’s lead single even arrives. During a fan interaction in New York on Saturday (May 9), the 32-year-old singer was asked whether her upcoming eighth studio album would sound similar to 2020’s Positions, and her answer was brief but revealing: “no, but i love her.”
The comment immediately spread across social media, becoming the clearest indication yet that petal may move away from the slow-burning R&B and trap-pop textures that defined Positions. Grande’s response also arrives hours after she officially announced “hate that i made you love me,” the album’s lead single, due May 29.
Grande unveiled the track on May 8, confirming that the song was produced by herself, Max Martin, and ILYA Salmanzadeh. The trio helped shape some of the defining moments of her catalog, including material from Sweetener, Thank U, Next, and Positions itself. Still, Grande’s latest comments suggest petal may lean into a different emotional and sonic direction altogether.
“hate that i made you love me / my first single off of petal / 5.29 / one of my favorite songs i’ll ever write,” she wrote in the announcement. She later described Martin and ILYA as her “favorite collaborators and dearest human beings in the world.”
Speculation surrounding the album’s sound has intensified throughout the past month, especially after Grande described the project as “feral” during an Instagram video teasing the record’s themes. According to the singer, petal explores emotional detachment, personal growth, and abandoning the need to stay “polite” creatively.
“It was kind of about breaking up with all kinds of negative attachments,” Grande explained earlier this month. “Things that no longer serve me. It’s a little feral. It’s definitely from a place that I have been maybe, like, too shy or polite to tap into before.”
That framing sharply contrasts the atmosphere surrounding Positions, which debuted in October 2020 and leaned heavily into intimacy, romance, and understated R&B production. The album opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and produced the chart-topping title track, but its softer approach divided sections of Grande’s fanbase at the time.
Petal arrives July 31 through BabyDoll Music under exclusive license to Republic Records, while the Eternal Sunshine Tour launches June 6 in Oakland before running across 41 arena dates through September 1 in London.
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