Ariana Grande's eighth studio album, "Petal," opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week, giving her a seventh career chart-topper and her strongest first-week performance in seven years. Grande shared the news with fans in an Instagram Story on Sunday, writing that she was grateful "from the bottom of my heart."
The album earned 295,000 equivalent album units in its first week, according to Billboard. Of that total, 168,000 units came from pure sales — Grande's second-largest sales week ever — while streaming accounted for 126,000 units, equal to roughly 128.83 million on-demand streams. Vinyl sales reached 96,000 copies, the largest vinyl week of her career. "Petal" also topped the albums chart in 13 other territories, including the UK, Australia, Germany and Switzerland.
The debut ties Grande with Lady Gaga and Janet Jackson for the fifth-most No. 1 albums among solo women in Billboard 200 history. Taylor Swift leads with 15, followed by Barbra Streisand with 11, Madonna with 10 and Beyoncé with eight.
Recorded between January and April across studios in New York, Los Angeles and Stockholm, "Petal" is Grande's first full-length release since 2024's "Eternal Sunshine." She and longtime collaborator Ilya Salmanzadeh co-wrote and executive-produced the 12-track record, with Max Martin producing three songs. The album centers on the image of a petal pushing up through pavement cracks, which Grande has described as a metaphor for resilience. Lead single "Hate That I Made You Love Me" reached No. 1 on both the Hot 100 and the UK singles chart before the title track arrived alongside the full album on July 31.
A quieter kind of pop record
Critics have responded unevenly to the shift in sound. Reviewing the album for the Associated Press, Maria Sherman gave it three out of five stars, writing that Grande "has moved on, as she is entitled to do," and describing a record largely stripped of the singer's signature vocal runs in favor of what Sherman called a "somber R&B swagger" indebted to SZA.
Grande has moved on, as she is entitled to do.
Maria Sherman, Associated Press
Other reviews were more divided. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield credited the record for the way "anger functions as the album's strength," while a review in The Independent called it "listless and bland." A compilation of 16 critic scores on Metacritic put the album at 67 out of 100, or "generally favorable."
Stepping back after the tour
The chart debut lands just over a week after Grande's representatives confirmed she plans to step back from public-facing work once her Eternal Sunshine Tour concludes. The North American leg wrapped in Chicago on Friday; ten final shows remain at London's O2 Arena between August 15 and September 1. As part of the pullback, Grande is withdrawing from a planned West End revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park With George," in which she had been set to star opposite Jonathan Bailey at the Barbican Centre.
Her representative told NBC News the decision followed "endless, ongoing public scrutiny," much of it focused on her physical appearance, and stressed that the break is a temporary step rather than a retirement. A source close to Grande described the tour as physically demanding, requiring nightly athleticism, and framed the hiatus as a health decision rather than a response to any single incident.
Grande has otherwise let the album speak for itself since the announcement, posting behind-the-scenes photos and videos from the "Petal" sessions captioned "petal forever." No return date has been set, though she remains attached to the film "Focker-in-Law," due in theaters in November.
For now, the chart numbers suggest her audience has not gone anywhere. "Petal" enters the closing stretch of the Eternal Sunshine Tour as both one of the more divisive records of Grande's career with critics and, by the sales math, one of the biggest.
