Julian Dakdouk.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
It’s not been an easy time for Ariana Grande. Caught between the crosshairs of tabloid scrutiny, public judgment and the intense expectations of her own fanbase, the heavy weight of global stardom has followed her everywhere. When she dropped her seventh studio album, ‘eternal sunshine’, in 2024, she laid it all bare – spinning a delicate story of public expectations, complicated love and hard-won self-acceptance.
After the global phenomenon of ‘Wicked’ and its sequel, Grande could have easily gone into hiding for a while. Instead, she hit back with ‘petal’, her eighth studio album and a distinctly darker, sharper companion piece to ‘eternal sunshine’. Released this past July, the record violently strips away the dream-pop softness of its predecessor. It trades vulnerability for a confrontational, unapologetic mood, taking direct aim at intrusive media, entitlement from fans, toxic exes and the psychological scars of a lifetime in the spotlight.
As Grande continues the ‘eternal sunshine’ tour, her first since 2019, Schön! caught her London residency at The O2, where the singer brought together the two contrasting albums and nearly a decade of pop history into one surprisingly intimate show.
Julian Dakdouk.
With the tour now heading towards its final London dates, Grande has described the experience as a “beautiful corrective experience” and one of the most healing and meaningful of her career. The singer has also confirmed she will embark on a lengthy break from public life once the tour concludes its final London date on 1 September, clarifying that the hiatus was long-planned.
While our particular evening focused entirely on the solo material, the multi-night run has been full of surprises: on the residency’s second night, Grande brought out her ‘Wicked’ co-star Cynthia Erivo for an unannounced duet – one of several moments that have kept the London shows feeling distinct from one another.
A house sits at the centre of the arena, initially looking almost fragile before it becomes engulfed in flames, overgrown with weeds and eventually transformed by flowers. Dystopian motifs like flashing surveillance imagery, blaring police sirens and sweeping helicopter searchlights puncture the sleek pop production, tracking a brilliant, occasionally chaotic narrative arc: what happens if Grande can walk back through her own history and decide which pieces to keep?
Julian Dakdouk.
That question gets answered the second the music starts. Grande storms out with ‘yes, and?’, ‘positions’, ‘dandelion’ and ‘the boy is mine’, instantly reminding everyone that she remains frighteningly good at being a pop star. Her voice has always been the main event, but hearing it inside the O2 makes the argument all over again. Even songs that have been played to death across streaming services suddenly sound fresh when that crystalline soprano cuts through 20,000 screaming fans. Her wardrobe perfectly mirrors this defiant energy, keeping her “heels tall” and silhouettes ultra-feminine – shifting from soft, flowy fabrics to more provocative looks laced with ribbons and attitude.
Then she asks for a moment of silence, surrounded by a thick stage mist beneath a starry platform. ‘eternal sunshine’ is performed with a live looped vocal introduction, stripping the song back enough for its loneliness to become more obvious – perhaps with the added pressure of knowing that Grande’s own idol, Imogen Heap, was watching from the audience. ‘just like magic’ follows, before the show moves through iconic hits like ‘thank u, next’ and ‘7 rings’. The juxtaposition is almost funny now. Grande can sing about emotional detachment one minute and the global fantasy of luxury and independence the next, yet both songs belong to completely different versions of the same person.
Julian Dakdouk.
The biggest surprise is, at this point, how naturally ‘petal’ fits into a concert that was conceived before the album existed. It sounds like a continuation of the conversation Grande started on ‘eternal sunshine’, except the language has changed. Where ‘eternal sunshine’ looks inward, tracks like ‘twilight zone’ and ‘past life’ point fingers outwardly, paving the way for a stadium-rock delivery of ‘Dangerous Woman’ that absolutely blasts the roof off the arena.
The “old Ariana” some fans were striving for comes back to life through unforgettable hits like ‘Break Free’, ‘Rain on Me’, ‘Into You’ and ‘One Last Time’ – although, they’re friendly reminders that she’s evolved both musically and artistically from them. Grande does not appear particularly interested in pretending that she is still the same person who embarked on the ‘Sweetener World Tour’ in 2019. She looks back, but she does not always seem nostalgic. Some songs are performed almost as historical artefacts – pieces of a career she has had to carry for years while simultaneously trying to construct another life outside of it.
Julian Dakdouk.
That tension is particularly striking during the ballad passages like ‘twilight zone’, which feels worlds away from the arena-ready choreography of previous tracks. So does ‘we can’t be friends (wait for your love)’, which builds up to a short moment of “sitting in silence” that fans can barely achieve.
The final image is suitably open-ended. Grande rises into the light, seemingly weightless above the stage, as the evening dissolves around her. It could be an ending, a rebirth, a theatrical trick or simply a very expensive way of saying goodnight.
For someone who has spent so much of her career being told who she is supposed to be, the most powerful thing about the ‘eternal sunshine’ tour may be its refusal to settle on one version of Ariana Grande. The little girl from Broadway, the Nickelodeon star, the pop phenomenon, Glinda: they are all still there, but for a few hours in London, Grande gets to decide which one takes the stage.
photography. courtesy of Julian Dakdouk
words. Gennaro Costanzo
