Ariana Grande may be entering her boldest season yet

Ariana Grande has has built such a strong pop legacy over the past decade as one of the world's most consistently dangerous hitmakers — but also one of the game's weirdest minds. “Yes and?” is her comeback number one, a disco rage-queen anthem that raises expectations for her long-awaited comeback, Eternal sunshine. It's an extremely ugly manifesto to kick off Ariana's new era. Just turning thirty, she's completing her return to Saturn and making music after a four-year layoff. But she's got some non-holistic shit to talk about to anyone who gossips about her between albums. “Don't comment on my body, don't reply,” Arie sneers. “Your business is your business and mine is mine/Why do you care so much which bird I drive?”

Madonna, one of Grande's idols, is the guiding spirit of “Yes, And?”, which leads to a “Vogue”-style house beat. It's a clever nod to the Queen, who invented this power move to remind people how controversial you are by complaining about how controversial you are. But it's also a perfect spiritual rallying cry at a pivotal moment for Grande. She's 30, about the age Madonna made her big move in the future Like a Prayer, the album that launched her into one of the most dizzyingly brilliant thirties any pop artist has ever had. So for Grande to invoke “Vogue,” right at the turn of Madonna's decade, seems like a bold statement about her ambitions—she wants to play in this historic league. Thirty-year-old Madonna had it both ways: refined mega-pop depth and disco bombast. Why not Ariana?

For an extra boost in idol juice, Ariana just dropped a remix featuring guest vocals from Mariah Carey, whom she calls “the one and only, queen of my heart and lifelong inspiration.” In a post announcing the remix, Ariana said: “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this dream come true and for sprinkling your sparkle and magic on my little song.” Mariah replied: “Dear angel, I'm so excited to be with you on yes, and? remix!! This is such a magical moment!!” Ariana also added “I love you eternally,” a possible connection between her album title and “You're Mine (Eternal),” Carey's 2014 single. My. I Am Mariah….The Elusive Chanteuse.

The stakes are high for Eternal sunshine. Grande set the tone by posting a devotional for the new year. “I have never felt more at mercy and acceptance of what life was screaming to teach me,” she wrote. Life has been calling out so much wisdom to Ariana, and she's finally ready to share it. After four years, he has a lot to prove.

Grande has always been gloriously unpredictable. When she first made her mark as a true star, it was 10 years ago with her 2014 hit “Problem” and her album My everything. But he came in like a kid talking about the trash he played growing up. Everything about her seemed too over-the-top: her Bardot ponytail, her mini-Mariah pipes, her mascara-dripping eyeliner, the perpetually bored scowl of teenage scorn. Ten years later, he has proven that he will try anything for kicks. He makes shiny ballads, dance bangers, hip hop sex, trap Sound of Music — but everything looks like her. She broke up with Pete Davidson, rushed out a quickie called “Thank U, Next” and shocked everyone with one of the decade's most indelible classics.

Eternal sunshine is her first new music since hitting 2020, Seats, the ultimate pandemic-era perv-disco concept album about quarantine madness: a couple locked at home together for so long there's nothing to do but destroy the furniture in a nature-healing frenzy. Future historians will mate Seats with Folklore as the yin and yang of lockdown culture, two experimental pop classics lost in cabin fever. Seats does it hold up really well? sounds better every year. But it's been a long time since the “34+35” days. “Such a dream come true, true/Make a bitch wanna hit snooze, ooh” — those were different times.

The snooze season has been a surprisingly long break for any pop star these days, but especially for Grande, after her bang-bang prolific streak. Sweetener, Thanks Next, and Seats. The faster she worked, the crazier and crazier she went, the higher she climaxed. Her favorite moments came when she talked her shit and hit send before anyone could tell her. But in her years away, her only new music has been occasional cameos on other people's remixes while she's filming the upcoming Bad movies, starring Glinda. She also made headlines with her marriage, divorce and romance with co-star Ethan Slater, which fuels her fury in 'Yes, And?'

In case anyone forgot about those scandals — let's face it, we all had so many others to watch — it's a smart move to kick her Eternal sunshine era with a lead single that recaps 'previously on Ariana'. She's always had her own knack for surfing the tabloid headlines — so we got “Thank U, Next,” where she turned what could have been the most trivial celebrity shade into a genuinely poignant pop life-coach lesson, the most unexpected her wise speech. But this woman always knows how to embrace controversy, going all the way back to the most iconic crisis of her career, her legendary donut-licking scandal in 2015, when she outraged a nation by rioting in a bakery late at night, tasting the goodies and saying: “I hate America.” (Hell, we need a revival of pop star pastry dramas.) It was the power move of a true queen of doom.

Eternal sunshine took its title from Michel Gondry's 2004 drama about a broken couple who can only move on by medically erasing each other's lives from their brains. It suggests that Ariana has some bittersweet memories to clear up. She teams up with longtime collaborators Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh, a symbolic full-circle moment as they were on hand for her coronation with “Problem” and My everything a decade ago. Entering their thirties is often a time when pop queens introspect and decide to leave their boldest marks in history — Carole King Tapestry, Janet Jackson the velvet rope, Taylor Swift Lover, Joni Mitchell Hejira, and, of course, Madonna goes into full-throttle Damn Right Expressing Myself Thanks for Asking mode. So this is a huge moment for Ariana. During its amazing last decade, it has been explored almost everywhere. But Eternal sunshine it's where she shows the world where she's ready to go next.