A Complete History of Saturn Return in Music: Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves and More
Whether you believe in astrology or not, you can’t swing a pair of headphones this year without hearing a pop star talk about their Saturn return.
Ariana Grande and Kacey Musgraves both recently dropped albums referencing the astrological occurrence, which is loosely defined as the moment the planet Saturn returns to the same place in the sky that it was in when a person was born. But what happens during a Saturn return, and why are all of these people singing about it?
The first return of Saturn typically occurs between the ages of 27 and 31. According to conventional astrological wisdom, it represents the moment when a person finally reaches full adult maturity, complete with real challenges and serious responsibilities.
Saturn “returns” approximately every 29.5 years, meaning that a person will likely experience the phenomenon three times. Western astrologers believe that the Saturn return represents major change: a person experiencing it is in the midst of crossing over to the next stage of their life. The first one happens when you’re a young adult, the second happens in middle age and the third occurs near the end of life. (A potential fourth Saturn return would only occur if you lived to be about 114.)
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Musicians have tended to focus on the first Saturn return, perhaps because so many of them start their careers so young. By the time they hit 27, they’ve already seen it all.
Keep reading for a complete history of Saturn return in music:
Stevie Wonder (1976)
Wonder’s “Saturn” from his classic album Songs in the Key of Life isn’t explicitly about a Saturn return, but the lyrics paint a picture of a place where life is slower and people are less impulsive. “Packing my bags, going away / To a place where the air is clean / On Saturn / There's no sense to sit and watch the people die,” Wonder sings. “We don't fight our wars the way you do / We put back all the things we use / On Saturn / There's no sense to keep on doing such crimes.”
And while Wonder didn’t use the phrase “Saturn return” on this song, he was likely starting his first one at the time of its writing: Songs in the Key of Life dropped when he was 26.
No Doubt (2000)
For millennials of a certain age, the phrase “Saturn return” calls to mind one thing only: No Doubt’s fourth studio album, Return of Saturn. After becoming superstars thanks to 1995’s Tragic Kingdom, the band reconvened for a darker exploration of young adulthood, spurred in part by frontwoman Gwen Stefani’s own Saturn return. On “Simple Kind of Life,” she sings about her conflicted thoughts on becoming a mother and a wife, while “Six Feet Under” is a deceptively peppy consideration of how birthdays are also a reminder of death. “Artificial Sweetener” actually references astrology directly, with Stefani crooning, “The return of Saturn / Assessing my life / Second guessing.”
In April 2024, Kanal exclusively told Us Weekly that he thinks the “coming-of-age” aspect of Saturn return is the reason it keeps coming up in pop music. “There's that connection that we all explore in art, and things going in cycles,” he explained. “And I can only speak to my relationship with things coming full circle and where we're at now as a band 37 years in, it just feels like a really great place to be. The way we can look at each other and respect each other as adults is just a beautiful thing. … I think maybe there's that coming-of-age thing that happens constantly for whatever age you're at or whatever point in life you're at. Maybe that's where it's at.”
R.E.M. (2001)
“Saturn Return” appeared on R.E.M.’s 12th studio album, Reveal. The song is sung from the perspective of a woman who has an epiphany about changing her life while working at a convenience store. “Easy to poke yourself square in the eye / Harder to like yourself, harder to try,” sings frontman Michael Stipe, who experienced his own Saturn return about a decade earlier.
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Katy Perry (2013)
Perry sang about her Saturn return on the Prism track “By the Grace of God,” which begins with the lyrics, “Was 27, surviving my return to Saturn / A long vacation didn't sound so bad / Was full of secrets, locked up tight like Iron Mountain / Running on empty, so out of gas.”
The song also includes references to Perry’s divorce from Russell Brand, whom she wed in 2010. Brand announced their divorce in December 2011, when Perry was — no surprises here — 27.
Adele (2021)
Adele obliquely referenced her Saturn return while promoting her fourth album, 30, which was largely inspired by her divorce from ex-husband Simon Konecki. During a concert at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles that aired in November 2021, Adele wore earrings in the shape of the planet Saturn.
She also discussed her Saturn return in a cover story with Vogue at the time, saying, “It’s where I lost the plot. … When that comes, it can rock your life. It shakes you up a bit: Who am I? What do I want to do? What makes me truly happy? All those things.”
Angie McMahon (2023)
The Australian singer-songwriter released a track called “Saturn Returning” after a three-year break from music and inadvertently kicked off a months-long onslaught of Saturn references. “I'm gonna let Saturn returning distort me / Just wanna be wide awake when I'm 40,” she sings.
“Your Saturn return is like a teacher, and this song is a conversation with myself through a time of significant endings and beginnings, where compassion and hope have been the best antidote to my own mental health struggles,” McMahon told Rolling Stone in June 2023. “The biggest lesson I’ve had in this chapter of my life is the value of a gentle and loving relationship with myself, no matter what.”
MS MR (2023)
The duo released their last single as a band — appropriately titled “Saturn Return” — in September 2023. “You're my Saturn return / We orbit and burn / With one foot out of the grave,” read the lyrics in the second verse.
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Rêve (2023)
Canadian singer-songwriter Rêve released her debut album, Saturn Return, in October 2023. The closing track, also titled “Saturn Return,” reflects on the bittersweetness of getting older, with lines like, “We look kindly on the past / Why were we so hellbent on growin' up fast?”
Paramore (2023)
Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams has called the band’s sixth album, This Is Why, their Saturn return moment. “Because there's certain things about our career that do feel full circle, that feel almost like we're getting our own Saturn return as a band,” she told Coup de Main in November 2023. “It's a little early, I think we'd have another seven years or something, but then at the same time, there's more openness and maybe more possibility than ever for things to kind of keep going and go in directions that we maybe don't even know right now. We're going to be finished with the contract that was signed and that essentially made Paramore our job and our livelihood — that's going to be done this year and there's a lot of things about that that feel really, really exciting.”
SZA (2024)
SZA’s “Saturn” debuted a couple of years after the singer went through her own Saturn return. The track is about feeling stuck in a rut after a cycle of painful experiences. “This must be what hell is like / There's got to be more, got to be more,” she sings. “Sick of this head of mine / Intrusive thoughts, they paralyzе / Nirvana's not as advertised / Therе's got to be more, been here before.”
Ariana Grande (2024)
Grande’s seventh album, Eternal Sunshine, includes a “Saturn Return Interlude” narrated by YouTube astrologer Diana Garland. “When we’re all born, Saturn is somewhere — and the Saturn cycle takes around about 29 years. That’s when we’re going to wake up and smell the coffee,” Garland explains on the track. “If we’ve just been sort of relying on our cleverness or relying — you know, just kind of floating along, Saturn comes along and hits you over the head and says, ‘Wake up! It’s time for you to get real about life and sort out who you really are.’”
Grande, who turned 30 while recording Eternal Sunshine, underwent plenty of change during her Saturn return, including her divorce from Dalton Gomez and her subsequent new romance with Ethan Slater.
Kacey Musgraves (2024)
Musgraves was 35 when she released her sixth album, Deeper Well, but the album’s title track references the prior decade of her life. “My Saturn has returned,” she sings. “When I turned 27 / Everything started to change.” Musgraves turned 27 in 2015, the same year that she released her breakthrough album, Pageant Material. The following year, she met Ruston Kelly, whom she wed in 2017. In 2018, she released Golden Hour, which won several Grammys and made her a superstar. She and Kelly filed for divorce in 2020, at which she was on the cusp of turning 32 — and thus at the tail end of her Saturn return.
