Ariana Grande: why is 2024 her year?

Fans of Ariana Grande have had their hands full since the start of the year… and for a good reason! The American superstar is coming back with a bang in 2024. She took to the music scene by storm with her seventh record, Eternal Sunshine, released last March.

This new thirteen-track opus marked a turning point in the career of the 31-year-old singer, who had not released any album since 2020.

Yes, and?: Ariana Grande’s successful comeback

Looking for a forerunner of Ariana Grande’s 180-degree turn? The single Yes, and?, unveiled last January and announced by multiple clues shared on her social media, adds another string to her bow. Shortly before the release of the track, the Californian singer unveiled several street photos of herself, wearing a jumper embroidered with the title of the single. The star with 370 million followers on Instagram then presented a splendid house music track, following in the footsteps of Beyoncé’s Break My Soul (2022) and Madonna’s iconic hit Vogue (1990).

As well as giving in to the current musical trend of producing tracks tailor-made for voguing dancers, the performer of No Tears Left to Cry (2018) has shown a desire to be more in tune with herself.

After being mocked for her love life, her physical appearance and her career choices, Ariana Grande has given her signature pop music a new, happier sound. A remix featuring Mariah Carey has also been unveiled.

Eternal Sunshine: an album title that pays tribute to Mac Miller

On January 17th, 2024, shortly after the resounding success of her single Yes, and?, Ariana Grande posted a series of photos on Instagram with “Eternal Sunshine 3.8” for sole caption. Those two single words and a date set off a veritable craze, garnering no less than 5 million likes in just a few hours.

But why this name? The album title refers to Michel Gondry’s 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which Jim Carrey has a sublime and complex love affair with Kate Winslet. While the American actor is said to have been Ariana Grande’s first celebrity crush, the film was also a favourite of her late ex-partner, American rapper Mac Miller, who died in 2018. In 2013, when the two were dating, Mac Miller told Complex Magazine: “I love Jim Carrey when he’s being serious. He killed this role. Whenever I’m talking to a girl, I always tell them to watch Eternal Sunshine. It cuts deep.”

Ariana Grande composed a concept album

In a video posted on her social media accounts, Ariana Grande announced that this new opus is “kind of a concept album because it’s all different heightened pieces of the same story of the same experience.”

Composed with Ilya Salmanzadeh and renowned Swedish producer Max Martin – who has already worked with Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Ariana Grande on the albums Sweetener (2018) and thank u, next (2019) – Eternal Sunshine blends new sounds, at the crossroads between house and R’n’B, moving away from pure pop music. As for the other tracks of her album, the star shares that “some tracks are representative of a certain vulnerability, while others match what people would sometimes expect (her) to be.”

This duality could have forecasted collaborative tracks with SZA, Doja Cat and Ice Spice, according to several rumours. In the end, the only track with a featuring, Ordinary Things, is a collaboration with her 98-year-old grandmother.

After a career spanning more than 10 years, Ariana Grande keeps breaking new records

Many fans speculated that yes, and? would be the first single from Eternal Sunshine to join the thirteen other tracks by the singer that have already reached the one billion listenings on Spotify, accumulating over 400 million listeners already on the platform.

Ariana Grande is the female artist with the highest number of songs that went beyond that threshold. Yet, it is another haunting pop single, we can’t be friends (wait for your love), that is most likely to repeat the feat. It has already been streamed more than 800 million times across the globe, a figure that has grown steadily since the release of the album.

Ariana Grande isn’t resting on the success of her new project and keeps reviving the greatest hits from her discography. This year, her album My Everything celebrates its tenth birthday. For the occasion, the singer has reissued a new version of the record which established the young Ariana Grande as one of the biggest names in pop music a decade earlier. Bang Bang, One Last Time, Love Me Harder… A myriad of singles with a somewhat inconsistent coherence, which obsessed the airwaves as soon as they came out.

The album almost never saw the light of day

In 2020, six years after My Everything, Ariana Grande unveiled Positions, a final project that was to mark the artist’s comeback on the silver screen. The project wasn’t due until 2027 since it started during the Hollywood actors’ strike. On February 26th this year, the artist confessed that she “didn’t have the goal to make an album” on the mic of the Zach Sang Show.

She continued: “I was actually really opposed to coming out with music until after Wicked – either both parts or just the one part. But as soon as the strike began, I went to New York. Max Martin also came to New York to spend a week with me at Jungle City studios, and it all just kind of started pouring out. I kept going back on my own (…) I listened to what I was doing and I thought maybe it was worth sharing. I love this album.”

In fact, this unexpected musical comeback was helped by the character of Galinda in Wicked, who taught her “some great life lessons”. “I healed a lot of parts of myself alongside and through her, and it actually helped me heal a lot of my own personal, weird stuff that I had with my relationship to music and being an artist and that persona. Thanks to Galinda, I was able to come home and address it and sit with it and change the things that weren’t working – and fall in love with it again.” And we all fell in love again with Ariana Grande and her comforting songs, which we’d been missing for four years…

Wicked, the fantastic musical starring Ariana Grande

As good news never comes alone, the first images of the adaptation of the musical Wicked, directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians), have been unveiled and have also caused a stir on social media.

After Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the superstar is preparing to revisit another one of her favourite films. She is now one of the stars of this retelling of The Wizard of Oz, alongside British actress Cynthia Erivo, who will embody the witch Elphaba. After starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth on a Broadway adaptation in 2003, Wicked takes us to the fairytale landscapes of the famous and magical Land of Oz.

In a fantastic trailer unveiled on May 15th, we meet Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton, Fellow Travelers), Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Jeff Goldblum in the middle of an enchanted school.

Over the course of the film, the two protagonists forge a beautiful friendship, even though everything pits them against each other. They must defy their prejudices as a conspiracy threatens one of them… We won’t tell you more. In development since 2004, this feature will also have a second part, scheduled for November 26th, 2025.

Eternal Sunshine (2024) by Ariana Grande, available now. Wicked (2024) by Jon Chu, starring Ariana Grande, in cinemas on December 4th, 2024.

Translation by Emma Naroumbo Armaing.