Ariana Grande’s New Single Is One of Her Worst

Breakup rumors have circled Ariana Grande and her partner, Ethan Slater, since last year’s Wicked: For Good press run, when TikTok and blog theories toyed with the idea that Grande’s commitment to work was pushing her lover away (despite his role as her Glinda’s Tinman). The couple individually responded via public acts of encouragement: Slater attended her December Saturday Night Live hosting gig; in a March Instagram Story, she congratulated him on Marcel in the Night, an Off Broadway play he co-wrote and starred in. Whether or not there was ever actually a schism, the rumor mill was confident and uninformed. Grande now appears to address it all in “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” the glum sigh of a lead single from her forthcoming eighth album, Petal, and first new music as herself since Eternal Sunshine’s parade of deluxe add-ons ended in early 2025. She returns with a shrug for unnamed nuisances, and that attitude unfortunately extends to the beat and vocal delivery. This feels like a snooze compared to most of the songs that have launched her album campaigns, making it one of her worst lead singles yet (though not as bad as “Problem”). But it’s also a (too) time-tested hit formula.

The song can either scan as a snapshot of an eventful couple’s spat, a villain anthem like “Thank U Next,” or a chop at parasocial observers who get bored and invent celebrity drama. The third reading is likeliest given her previous contempt in “Yes And?” off 2024’s Eternal Sunshine, in which she sang, “Why do you care so much whose dick I’m riding?” “Love Me” is most intriguing as a diss track for her fans in the mold of Taylor Swift’s defensive 2024 song “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” In this light, Grande’s bridge is captivating: “I’ve held your projections when you’ve felt so insecure / Tell me, why is it this way? / Why you so hate to see women endure? / Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts of your own accord? / I don’t really think so.” If it’s directed at her audience, she’s telling everyone it’s their own fault they’re disappointed in her about anything. And if you’ve written her off as a homewrecker who broke up Slater’s marriage for a showmance, the chorus lets you maintain that stance: “I hate that I made you love me / ’Cause I barely tried.”

The bloopy Max Martin and ILYA production that accompanies Grande’s subdued vocals and downcast, disdainful lyrics — “You studied my crown and borrowed my body” — makes trying to figure out who she’s talking to or about the song’s most exciting bit of action. The next major point of interest is the punchy, barely contained synth bass that eats up much of the mix, but even that is pulling from a predictable arsenal of Max Martin tendencies. Most artists who’ve worked with the Swedish legend and his cohort lately have ended up in a similar musical ballpark. His current two-year streak of new-age Coldplay soup, glossy Weekend retro jams, and good-to-aight Europop fare from Swift all share the same problem: It sounds like what pop stars were making a decade ago. The dour synth-pop of “Hate That I Made You Love Me” felt fresher in 2014 on Swift’s “Clean” and Grande and the Weeknd’s “Love Me Harder,” or in 2012 on P!nk’s “Try.” 

What made Grande stick out back then was a limber voice that begged to be dressed in sounds that swing. She rarely sang on anything as rhythmically inelastic, as borderline R&B-averse, as this new track. She delivers her lines on “Love Me” without her famously word-obscuring melisma, so we get what she’s saying. But showing this much restraint makes the song feel like a soundcheck, unlike her other lead singles — from the feisty “Yes, And?” to the cloying Iggy Azalea team-up “Problem” to the bubbly “The Way” with Mac Miller — which set out to get people’s feet tapping. So this has to be a pump fake, right? She’ll coax brilliance out of Max (and herself) on the rest of the album, right?