Grande’s career has been presented to us as a chain of successive breakthroughs, whether making a full-throated bid for pop glory (My Everything), persevering through almost unthinkable degrees of heartbreak (Sweetener), or fully embracing her adult sensuality (Positions). Like Taylor Swift, the singer has been able to maintain a mass following by time-stamping each era with different boyfriends, makeovers, and most crucially: lending the decisive final word to all the back-biting and petty gossip. On eternal sunshine, Grande takes a widely publicized moment of personal upheaval and chisels it into the a-ha! moment of her discography. Loosely billed as a “concept record” about her divorce and the personal revelations her Saturn return inspired, sunshine is a slightly scattered, but emotionally generous collection of music that cycles compassionately through the collapse of one relationship and into the hopeful beginning of another.
