When Ariana Grande last played a headlining show at a New York arena, “Thank U, Next” — the song that solidified her as a mainstay of pop culture’s exosphere — was only a few months old. Seven years later, during the conclusion of a stellar five-night mini-residency at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center (July 19), the three-time Grammy winner continued her recent lyrical tweaks to that Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash, adding yet another layer to the Eternal Sunshine Tour’s celebration of real-time healing.
“Thank U, Next,” Ariana’s first of 10 Hot 100 chart-toppers, spawned from a perfect storm of cosmically tumultuous high-profile relationships and an impending musical imperial phase. Though its kiss-off anthem rooted in gratitude, that grounding is sometimes forgotten thanks to the juicy narrative of the song’s dramatic arrival — and its racier successors “7 rings” and “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored.” When she edited the first verse from “Wrote some songs about Ricky, now I listen and laugh” to “Wrote some songs about Ricky, we always find our way back” at Sunday night’s show, that in-the-moment update recentered the song’s roots — and recontextualized them in the grander remembrance-over-erasure narrative that drives the Eternal Sunshine album and tour.
Of course, the Ricky in question is Ricky Alvarez, reportedly Ariana’s current boyfriend, whom she last dated over 10 years ago. Grande and Alvarez’s professional relationship dates back to 2014, when he appeared as a backup dancer in her “Problem” music video and remained a key part of her inner circle, joining her for years of promotional performances and her 2015 Honeymoon Tour. The two notoriously made things donut shop-official by Independence Day that same year. Though they ended things by summer ’16, the pair remained friendly, with Alvarez joining Grande’s 2018 Sweetener World Tour as a photographer and videographer. Last week (July 14), TMZ confirmed the couple had rekindled their moonlit flame, following several increasingly positive “Thank U, Next” lyric tweaks dating back to “wrote some songs about Ricky, and they still kinda slap” at her June 24 show in Austin, Texas.
With that Ricky line going from flippantly dismissive to heartwarmingly full-circle, Grande has, somewhat unintentionally, reaffirmed her tour’s overall message of the innate beauty of a nonlinear healing process that hinges on the embraces of every past version of oneself. Simply having the courage to revisit a relationship a decade later, and surrendering to fate while still navigating its winding paths with agency sourced from the meticulous healing of various interlocked traumas, is proof that choosing not to repress or erase memories — as the tour interludes allude to — will always be the right choice. The last time Grande toured, she could barely get through “Thank U, Next” without tears welling up in her eyes, and now, she’s given the song a markedly more triumphant feel — especially with Sunday night’s “I’ll be thanking my dad, we all grew from the drama” lyric edit.
Split into five acts and interspersed with scenes from a short film co-directed by Grande and Christian Breslauer, the Eternal Sunshine Tour further expands the sci-fi-informed cinematic universe the pair established with 2024’s “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” music video and 2025’s three-time MTV Video Music Award-winning Brighter Days Ahead short film. After beginning with an interlude that brings her to the Brighter Days Clinic, where she’s undergoing a memory erasure procedure, Grande delivers an opening act anchored by her latter-day hits like “Yes, And?” and “Positions.”
Before she launches into the second act — which boasts a subtle throughline of reclamation from her loop station rendition of “Eternal Sunshine” (shoutout her YouTube cover days and The Honeymoon Tour’s Mi.Mu gloves) to her recontextualization of Thank U, Next’s No. 1 hits — Ariana falls. In a video interlude inspired by the “Helping Hands” sequence in Labyrinth (1986), Ariana is sent hurtling towards her deepest, darkest memories, foreshadowing the heavy undertone of that act’s setlist. That scene, which builds on the Twilight Zone-esque feel of the tour’s aesthetics, also highlighted the careful, difficult work Ariana has done to merge every artistic evolution for an audience that’s still disproportionately — and somewhat parasocially — attached to one specific iteration that just so happens to double as the most traumatic.
From the moment Grande was cast as G(a)linda the Good Witch opposite Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba Thropp in the Oscar- and Grammy-winning two-part Wicked film adaptations, fans and critics alike rushed to demarcate where Ariana the Pop Star diverged from Ariana the Actress. The Eternal Sunshine Tour rejects any such line in the sand, blending Ariana’s musical and cinematic sensibilities and steeping that combination in the West End-ready water of her musical theater foundation. For every jaw-dropping opt-up and improvised harmony during “Dangerous Woman” or “Past Life,” Grande made sure to continue her tribute to Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind while also nodding to the blindingly white life-death limbo station from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
That’s why it was so heartwarming to see her sly callbacks to Wicked sprinkled throughout the show — be it the friendship wave G(a)linda and Elphaba share in the movies or her “It’s good to see us, isn’t it?” quip during her official tour welcome remarks. During the Saturday night show (July 18), Grande even referenced the viral “Madame Morrible, M.M.; flip it around, wicked witch!” meme while performing “Just Like Magic.” While the Wicked era netted Grande yet another Grammy and her first career Oscar nomination, both films’ press cycles were also streaked with invasive dissections of her physical appearance, unfair characterizations of her and Erivo’s friendship and good old-fashioned misogyny. There seemed to be a conscious effort to mar that moment — one she’s been dreaming of since childhood — for Ariana. So it’s been incredible to see her be able to maintain a healthy relationship with the films in the days since, even if simply via understated gestures.
As for her relationship with her inner child, that’s a dynamic Grande is far more interested in exploring throughout the Eternal Sunshine Tour. A younger version of the singer-songwriter appears throughout the interludes, most notably when she joins present-day Grande for a rewatch of The Wizard of Oz. The two Grandes watch Glinda the Good Witch tell Dorothy that she always had the power to return home within herself — but she first had to complete her literal and emotional journeys to accept that truth fully. And that’s not just true of Grande; it also appears to be one of the grounding themes of her forthcoming Petal album, which is set to arrive on July 31 and will explore “something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.”
Before she closed the main show with Petal lead single “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” Ariana clarified to the crowd, “But I’m glad that I made you love me.” The Eternal Sunshine Tour is a triumphant return to arena stages for Grande after a seven-year break. An absolutely astonishing vocal showcase — seriously, it was like the heavens touching Earth for the just-under-two hours she was onstage — the Eternal Sunshine Tour also packs intricate, story-driven stage design; at long last, complementary choreography, and an incredibly locked-in band. Above all, this tour is a live look at Ariana Grande coming back home to herself as a live performer and pop figure — whether that’s through reclaiming her signature ponytail or drawing musical throughlines between her first and most recent studio albums, as she did with the back-to-back sequencing of “Honeymoon Avenue” and “Hampstead.”
Grande probably left at least 10-12 certified hits off the setlist (the entire Sweetener album was notably, but understandably, M.I.A.), but in prioritizing narrative, she elevated the Eternal Sunshine Tour into a real work of performance art — just look at her facial acting before she gets beamed up into the galaxy during the “Supernatural” finale. That focus on narrative consistency is also why she chose to visit versions of herself tied to transformative life eras (One Love Manchester, the Sweetener/Thank U, Next whirlwind) in the Wizard of Oz interlude, as opposed to more recognizable looks like the Dangerous Woman latex bunny ears.
In both narrative and execution, the Eternal Sunshine Tour is leaps and bounds beyond any other show Ariana has mounted at the arena level. And if the teaser of her forthcoming Vista Vision-shot music video for Petal’s title track and second single is any indication — she’s just beginning to scratch the surface.
