6 hours ago
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There’s a thrum of excitement in the air as an eight-minute countdown starts and Ariana Grande’s unmistakable silhouette appears on a giant backlit curtain on the stage of the O2. Is it actually her? Posing there for eight minutes before the show starts? It can’t be. But is it? It’s the first time we question what is and isn’t real at this Eternal Sunshine tour stop, a 10-night residency and a robust arena show that ultimately wants us to see one thing and experience another.
Collectively, we’ve been scolded for talking about it – the “endless, ongoing public scrutiny” of Ariana Grande’s body has pushed her to “[take] a step back from visibility” when this tour ends. It can’t be nice or fun to have your body examined and discussed for any reason but it is impossible to witness the 33-year-old’s frame on stage and not be gripped by genuine concern for her. Two songs in, a lump forms in my throat, which is not the intended effect of Positions, the zippy title track of her 2020 album. As the set around her is engulfed in digital flames, Grande sings about her infinite flexibility vis a vis relationship boundaries and sexual olympics and all I can think is: she looks like a little kid.
But you put it aside, of course. That’s how this all works: you’re powerless in the face of it, so you get on with enjoying the show, which is grand and sincere and slick, and full of songs that are so huge they rattle the rafters of the O2. There’s no pyro but who needs it when you have a voice as explosive as Ariana Grande’s? Her diva-era belters like Break Free and One Last Time are peaks amid the troughs of her newer, more subdued sounds. Dangerous Woman is punctuated by drums that sound like firecrackers as she drags the mic stand around the B-stage to belt the chorus directly to as many fans as possible. The songs from Petal, her eighth album released weeks ago, are largely packed into the final portion and forgo the juddering choreo of the rest of the show for something more gig-like. Pogoing through the live debut of Bad Thing and swishing her Victorian nightie around through a ferocious Petal, Grande cries: “It’s such a fucked situation.” Well, yes.
The energy of the show is buoyed by a gaggle of dancers who orbit around her, and you never feel Grande wane even as she struts up and down the runway on impossible stilettos. Her vocals are supple and astonishing, ad libs that scamper and swandive over songs – at the climax of Safety Net, she kneels at the edge of the stage casually emitting sounds that her peers would envy. When she speaks, her words run together like her thoughts are racing to get out of her mouth first: “I’msohappyfortheconnectionwe’veshared,” she says. “You’resuchabeautifulpresenceinmylife.”
Much of Grande’s music has been created in the face of painful adversity but it – and she, in this moment too – carries a lightness with it. She has a smile playing around her lips for most of Thank U, Next, which is a laundry list of romantic misadventures and regret, and a song that had the capacity to feel like a diary entry you cringe at years later. She throws her arms open to the crowd and flicks her long ponytail around with whip-like precision and all the sass of the woman who sees it and wants it and wants it and gets it.
Every so often that illusion of lightness breaks. She turns on the mid-stage and leans sort of forward as she sings Past Life, a move to communicate her earnest romantic pain, a plea for empathy. The angle she’s standing at and the lighting collude to knock the breath out of me for a second: I shouldn’t be able to see this person’s skeleton.
Those moments are deeply conflicting and in them I wish she had cancelled this run of dates rather than wait for them to wrap up. The show is a good testament to her 13-year pop career and worthy of being enjoyed, but that is hard to do when you feel that someone spectacular might be slipping through our fingers right in front of us. I really hope this tour does not go down in history for the wrong reasons: I hope it ends up a four-star aside in a long and rich life.
