Ariana Grande Isn’t Concerned With Making Up for Lost Time at ‘Eternal Sunshine’ Tour Opener

Grande Gets to Work

During her first headlining concert performance since 2019, the pop veteran ditched the greatest hits format for a pointed setlist that creates an essential conversation between herself and her fans

Ariana Grande needs everyone in Oakland Arena to be quiet. It’s opening night of the Eternal Sunshine tour and she’s standing at the circular end of the stage’s lengthy walkway with a loop station positioned in front of her. Her request asks a lot from the more than 17,000 people who’ve waited nearly seven years to share space with her again. She’s aware of this. When she emerges from a lift on the stage, it’s to the sound of piercing cheers. She takes it in for a moment, blowing kisses and holding her hand to her heart. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but maybe can you remain calm for just this one part?” Grande asks, gesturing to the loop station. “It feels like not the right time to ask you to be quiet.” The crowd responds with more noise, then settles as Grande gets to work.

The first few layers she records are different versions of the same lyric, “I don’t care what people say is true.” She adds some higher harmonies to one, then builds on it with a few more, then builds on that with even more. She moves on to the next section in her live mix. Won’t break. Can’t shake. This fate. Rewrite. Deep breaths. Tight chest. Life. Death. Rewind. The words loop over and over in different harmonic variations, some light, some more stern, some punctuated with an airy “buh, buh, bum.” Once it’s all loaded up, Grande gives the crowd a thumbs up. The audience’s collective voice joins in like a choir as she finally launches into “Eternal Sunshine.”

It’s just like old times — though a lot has changed since Grande wrapped her last headlining tour in December 2019, not least of all her relationship with pop stardom and its demands. “The last 10 or 15 years will look very different to the ones that are coming up,” Grande said earlier this year regarding her career. “I don’t want to say anything definitive. I do know that I’m very excited to do this small tour, but I think it might not happen again for a long, long, long, long, long time.” There isn’t much about the Eternal Sunshine tour that can be considered small. It’s both a triumphant return and an alleged departure wrapped up in nearly two hours of audiovisual spectacle.

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The 20 minutes that precede “Eternal Sunshine” include Grande’s kiss off “Yes, And,” which opened the set, and the first live performance of “Positions” in front of a live audience. She also leads with Eternal Sunshine tracks “The Boy Is Mine” and “Dandelion,” a bonus song released on last year’s deluxe, Brighter Days Ahead. It’s the Eternal Sunshine tour, so it’s obvious the record takes up the majority of the real estate across the 23-song tracklist. But Grande pays particular attention to those extra songs that came after the original album was released in 2024. Every single deluxe track makes it into the set: “Warm,” “Twilight Zone,” “Past Life,” and “Hampstead.”

“Hampstead” isn’t a particularly remarkable track, especially when considering the original Eternal Sunshine songs that were left off the setlist entirely, like “Don’t Wanna Break Up Again,” “True Story,” and “I Wish I Hated You.” The set aches with their absence, though there’s something about “Hampstead” that stands out live in a way it never did as a mere studio track. Here, on this stage, it feels more like a narrative device. Grande performs the track while sitting on stool with one leg tucked under her. There are no frills to the moment, just her and her microphone. The hits hold their weight — like “Into You,” “Rain on Me,” and “Break Free” — but there’s nothing more essential to the legacy of Ariana Grande than that voice. She seems comfortable sitting under that spotlight. Pop stars typically need more in their arsenal than this, but there’s a sense Grande could have performed the entire show this way.

Still, the show she builds around Eternal Sunshine is pointedly physical. Not necessarily in the sense of being physically demanding — the choreography Grande joins in alongside her 12-member dance crew is inspired, but nothing more complex than what she’s done before. But the movements they engage in draw attention to how all of these bodies move together in conversation with one another. Grande engages in a tense back and forth with one dancer during “The Boy Is Mine,” quite literally pushing and pulling her away with a whip in between their embraces.

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During “Past Life,” six dancers hoist her into the air. When she leaves the stage after “Hempstead,” two dancers deliver an intimate ballet routine set to the song’s instrumental. It all crafts a certain magnification, like when Grande sings, “Don’t comment on my body, do not reply” on “Yes, And?” as she’s surrounded by a dozen other freely flowing figures.

Grande has never been the type to ignore the whispers and presumptions that have accompanied her life in the public eye. At the top of the set, she acknowledges the time she spent playing Glinda in Wicked with a teasing reference, asking, “It’s good to see us, isn’t it?”

Then, of course, there’s the divorce. Grande can’t ignore the irony during the bridge on “Thank U, Next,” where she talks about wanting to get married some day. “Only wanna do it once, real bad,” she sings, holding up two fingers and laughing. “Gon’ make that shit last.” She’s still good at finding humor in moments that are generally devoid of it, but it’s another reminder of how much has changed since we last saw her on stage.

“7 Rings” is perhaps the most cutting example. Sitting in front of the image of a hot pink house, Grande seems like an entirely different artist now than the one who set the internet ablaze with the single in 2019. Even Positions, the album that followed the blockbuster release, seems like it was a lifetime ago. The album got more love on the Eternal Sunshine tour setlist than expected. Grande previously admitted to scrapping plans for Positions after picking up on what she called a “this is not what we want” vibe from some of her fanbase.

She never should have listened to them, but at least the manifestation mantra “Just Like Magic” made it to the set, as did “Safety Net” and “Positions.” Some of her career bests from the album, like “POV” and “Off the Table” were left off — but she also can’t be faulted for not wanting to spend every night on tour singing love songs she wrote about someone who later inspired her songs about falling out of love.

Still, Grande doesn’t want to forget it all. The set design for the Eternal Sunshine tour heavily references the visual world she built around the album in the Brighter Days Ahead short film, featuring her own take on the memory erasure clinic from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The set design is centered around the flooded, burned down, and demolished house that appears in the album visuals and is somehow still standing despite it all. In one scene, it even begins to bloom with flowers.

In between set and costume changes, Grande continues the story. Holding hands with her younger self while trudging through murky water from the flood she endured at the start of the show, she passes different versions of herself who sought out the treatment in search of a clean slate.

One wears her outfit from One Love Manchester, the tribute concert she hosted after 22 people were killed in a bombing during the Dangerous Woman tour in 2017. “One Last Time” still feels like their song as a chorus of thousands of voices plead to take each other home. It’s one of the most uplifting and emotional moments of the entire show. Another patient at the clinic is an even younger version of herself. That pumps and flared mini dress combo can only belong to Yours Truly-era Grande. She honors her with a jazzy, string-filled version of “Honeymoon Avenue,” the opening track on her first album. There’s nothing to represent the Sweetener era, but then again there are no songs from the album on the setlist, anyway.