Ariana Grande has spent the last 18 months talking about disappearing. During podcast appearances in 2024 and 2025, she discussed her plans to slow down and fade out, and described her then-forthcoming Eternal Sunshine tour – her first run of live shows since 2019 – as a “last hurrah”. Often, her own interest in being Ariana Grande has come into question, as she’s seemed to find greater creative bliss in musical theatre and acting – her first loves – than pop stardom. Similarly, she’s hinted in her new music at a tangled, oppressive dynamic with her own fandom. “Is it really my fault,” she sings on her recent No 1 single “Hate That I Made You Love Me”, “you all gave me your hearts of your own accord?”
So that slightly hectoring statement from her spokesperson last month, in which Grande announced an indefinite break due to “endless, ongoing public scrutiny”, seemed almost unnecessary. And strange, even, arriving just days after the release of a Grande music video that explicitly referenced weight loss, frustration and unhappiness… and inevitably sparked a tidal wave of concern among fans about Grande’s health and state of mind. It’s tough sometimes to be an Ariana Grande fan – you never quite know where you should stand, how much you should say, or how much you should expect to receive in return.
open image in galleryThe sombre, reflective and often quite brilliant Eternal Sunshine tour does little to put those questions to bed. On Saturday at London’s O2 – the first of 10 nights at the venue before the tour, and Grande’s public profile, goes dark – she pledged to “enjoy every second” of this last run of shows. The staging is confined to the burnt-out husk of a house, which is first engulfed in flames, then weeds, then flowers, while police car sirens and helicopter spotlights suggest violent state surveillance. In a series of visuals breaking up each of the show’s acts, Grande – or, rather, a girl called Peaches who looks and sounds a lot like her – contemplates erasing her history, pines for her lost innocence, and reconnects with her younger self. The show’s ethereal closer – in which Grande, her body slack and floating, is absorbed into a great, white light in the rafters of the O2 – is beautiful yet strangely morbid. Is this a symbolic… death? Whatever we’re meant to take from all of this, it undoubtedly feels like a goodbye.
The vexing thing about all of the noise surrounding Grande of late – from her chaotic Wicked press tour to her personal break-ups and make-ups – is that she’s arguably never been a better and more interesting musician. The setlist at the O2 makes this clear. The EDM crowdpleasers here – among them the Lady Gaga collab “Rain on Me” and the Zedd-produced “Break Free” – feel beamed in from not only a different timeline but a vastly different Grande, who has long retired the baby doll dresses, abrasive tanning and thigh-high boots that defined her earlier hits. Even the swaggering trap-pop of her blockbuster 2019 single “7 Rings” throws you off a little now. “Bought matching diamonds for six of my bitches”? Not our Glinda!
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open image in galleryGrande seems slightly stuck between the material she’s grown distant from – but which many of her fans expect to hear – and the more downbeat R&B and synth-pop of her last two records, 2024’s Eternal Sunshine and August’s Petal. They’re nocturnal albums, oscillating between aloof chilliness and plush warmth, and take a bit of work to fall for. But they spark the highlights here, Grande separating from her troupe of dancers to stand alone on stage and belt. “Twilight Zone”, an incredibly pretty cut from Eternal Sunshine’s deluxe reissue Brighter Days Ahead, is given a real showcase, and a Petal-centric encore (the gloomy “Kiss Me” and the Y2K-indie pop of “Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)” make their live debuts here) proves dazzling, Grande in a fluffy white gown cutting loose with her live band. The majestic, Robyn-tinged “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” is a gorgeously intimate closer.
It suggests the Grande that could be: a little smaller in scale, a little more raw, a little less submissive to the expectations (extensive choreography, elaborate staging) placed on pop stars of her calibre. It’s in these moments that she seems to have finally found herself, and where her boundaries lie, and the kind of music she wants to make. So it’s bittersweet to see her walk away. Necessary, probably. But still bittersweet.