Ariana Grande Sombre London Show Felt Like A Goodbye

[RAMROD 117,332]

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.

The 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.

Grande 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’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.

 

https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/ariana-grande-tour-review-eternal-sunshine-london-b3033798.html

[OMF 3,673]

It’s true she seems conflicted and I think many artists, including Gaga, go through this phase. Yet she did just release a new album so she hasn’t gone away

[FfFfFfFF 58,382]

What does Sombr have to do with any of it?

[SimonBaetens 9,524]

7 minutes ago, FfFfFfFF said:

What does Sombr have to do with any of it?

I was about to say I came here expecting a video of Sombr joining Ari on stage