Ariana Grande Credits Her ‘Massive’ Fandom for Jim Carrey for Inspiring New Album Title, Along with Reimagining Brandy and Monica’s ‘Boy Is Mine’ as a ‘Bad-Girl Anthem’

Ariana Grande is going clearing up some of the influences that have shaped her upcoming seventh studio album Eternal Sunshine.

The 30-year-old hitmaker clarified to Zane Lowe in an interview published Thursday for Apple Music 1 that it was the Jim Carrey–starring romantic sci-fi drama Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind that inspired its title.

She added that was specifically her ‘massive’ love of the actor — whom she worked with when she filmed a cameo for his series Kidding — that made her want to give the album that title.

Elsewhere in the 30-minute video she revealed that she had paid homage to Brandy and Monica’s 1998 hit The boy Is Mine, though she had changed her version of the concept into a ‘bad-girl anthem.’

Ariana shared that she was ‘really young’ when Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind — which was written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry — was released in 2004, which was around when she would have been 10.

‘I’m a massive Jim Carrey fan,’ she gushed. ‘I don’t know if you know this, but my first screen name was JimCarreyFan42. It’s always been a favorite of mine.’

Ariana would go on to have a dream come true when she appeared in a guest role as the Pickle Fairy of Hope on the second season of Carrey’s dark dramedy Kidding, which was canceled shortly afterward.

She also revealed in 2019 that she had gotten one of the actor’s iconic lines from his classic film The Truman Show tattooed on her: ‘In case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night!’

Zane asked Ariana what it was like to meet Carrey, and she confirmed that the advice to never meet your heroes absolutely did not apply to the funny man.

She gushed that it was ‘thrilling’ to finally meet him and confirmed that he was ‘even better’ in person that she had hoped he would be.

‘You know how sometimes you get nervous to meet your people, because you never know how they’re going to be and it’s very scary?’ she began. ‘He couldn’t be better. I love him so much more after meeting him.’

Carrey stars in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind as a listless man who is entranced by a woman he meets on the train one day.

But as their reality begins to fall apart, they realize they have both undergone an experimental brain procedure to erase their memories of the fact that they used to be in a romantic relationship.

The film costars Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood and the late Tom Wilkinson. It performed well at the box office and was a hit with critics, who gave Carrey some of the best reviews of his career.

Ariana paid tribute to the film in her publicity campaign, as one set of photos showed her with dual tangerine-colored buns that mimicked a look Kate Winslet briefly wears in the film, and a teaser for the video to her upcoming video for the single We Can’t Be Friends referenced the film’s concept.

Other Easter eggs were tougher to decipher. In a title card for her video to the lead single Yes, And?, she included geographical coordinates to Montauk on New York’s Long Island, a location that plays a pivotal role in the film.

She also included an excerpt on Instagram of Alexander Pope’s poem Eloisa To Abelard, which includes the line ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,’ which was reused for the movie’s title.

Elsewhere in the chat, Ariana revealed that she had updated Brandy and Monica’s classic single The Boy Is Mine for the new album. 

‘I love that song,’ she gushed to Zane, admitting, ‘I’ve always wanted to reimagine that in some kind of way.’

The God Is A Woman singer admitted that she wanted to take up the challenge after seeing how much fans loved her song Fantasize, which was leaked but not officially released.

The song had lyrics in which the narrator sings about wanting to steal another person’s lover: ‘Thought you were solo / But you got a girl though / And my life ain’t been the same.’

She realized that the sentiment was similar to The Boy Is Mine, in which Brandy and Monica trade lines and duke it out as they fight to date the same man, although she admitted that she was hesitant to touch such a popular song.

‘I think I was kind of like, “This is a very bad idea,”‘ she said. ‘But there is a large group of my fans that really — they do love a bad-girl anthem, and this is, I think, an elevated version of that.’

The ‘bad idea’ Ariana was alluding to seems to be the possibility that fans would see the song not just as a tribute to an older song that she loves, but as a reference to her relationship to her Wicked costar Ethan Slater.

They began dating shortly after her divorce from Dalton Gomez and after he filed for divorce from his wife Lily Jay, with whom he shares one child. 

She previously admitted on the Zach Sang Show that she has an ‘insatiable frustration [sic]’ and an ‘inexplicable, hellish feeling’ from ‘watching people misunderstand’ her and her relationship.

Although her song shares the same title, none of the previous tune’s songwriters are credited, indicating that it’s a completely original song that was merely inspired by the themes of the duet.