Ariana Grande's five-night run at Brooklyn's Barclays Center was a pitch-perfect fusion of music, live theater and film.
Ariana Grande at the opening night of The Eternal Sunshine Tour
Katia Temkin
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.
