Song: ‘Hate That I Made You Love Me’
Artist: Ariana Grande
US chart peak: 1 (Max’s 30th US number 1 (!), and second of the year)
Release date: May 29, 2026
Writers: Ariana Grande, Max Martin, Ilya
Producers: Ariana Grande, Max Martin, Ilya
Quintessential Max moment: The way the verse shifts gradually up through the gears before the chorus hits.
Video synopsis: A high budget revenge fantasy/elevated horror trailer.

I feel quite defensive about ‘Hate That I Made You Love Me’, the lead single from Ariana’s forthcoming eighth album, ‘Petal’. People have just been really wrong about it, and that upsets me. For example, I read something so stupid and annoying about it the other day that it propelled me to buy the 7″ single just to spite the critics. Just last night I was out and someone said they didn’t like the song and so this morning I’ve been playing it on a loop, as if my streams can make up for their lack of taste. One critic called it “dour”, which is so mad it makes me wish for the incoming AI wars to arrive sooner.

Maybe it’s a sign of our fried attention spans that we can’t let a song grow on us anymore. That we can’t enjoy subtlety, or crystalline beauty. That we need things to walk up to us, tweak our nipples and slap us hard in order for us to enjoy something. I hate it. I hate that I hate it. I hate that I love to hate it.

But I don’t want to write about this song from a place of anger, because everything about it, musically at least, is delicate like an eggshell. The initial beat is tactile, like a little finger tapping on your skin, while that silky riff feels like water lapping on a shoreline. If you listen carefully, there’s a distant off-beat that plays out a little ‘da-da’ way at the back, as if it’s an echo rattling around. The whole thing slinks around in a silk dress. But, and this is its real skill, if you step back you might see that the dress is fraying ever so slightly. There’s the slightest sinister edge to a lot of the prettiest Ariana songs of late, like the surface beauty has been soured and she’s trying really hard to keep smiling.

Lyrically, we’re back in similar terrain to much of ‘Eternal Sunshine’. It’s a world where relationships – be it romantic, or the ones with strangers – are conflated so that ‘love’ is adulation and unfortunately that adulation can be fickle. As with ‘We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)‘, this is a song that can be read from all angles, with Grande’s very public relationships factored in as an extra, unavoidable detail. I love the line “’cause I barely tried” at the end of the chorus. Like so much of the song, it can be read in different ways; a cunty kiss off, or a genuine sense that no one wants the level of fame – and criticism – that Ariana has. Once again, the vocal arrangement is off the scale amazing, adding extra layers as the song spins into its final chorus.

Look, you can hate this song, whatever – I DON’T CARE OK!!! – but you will have to live with the fact that you’re very wrong.