Ariana Grande Review – Sparkling hits and powerful vocals in a stunning return to the stage | Ariana Grande

IIf you are faced with the choice of erasing your most painful memories or living with them forever, a la “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, You’d be forgiven for wanting to wipe them away. on the first night of five shows in Los Angeles to promote her 2024 album Eternal Sunshine, Ariana Grande addressed the idea of ​​memory erasure in an emotional and sometimes hilarious performance, which highlighted one of her hardest discoveries: Forgetting her most painful experiences is not a deal she’s willing to make.

Grande has weathered tragedy and heartbreak in the public eye since her teenage years, including the death of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller and the Manchester bombing that killed 22 fans at one of her concerts in 2017. She’s touched on these devastating events in previous lyrics, but Eternal Sunshine marks the moment she realized it all. She has spoken of the astrological concept of her return to Saturn as making these challenges impossible to deny. Grande joins a long line of musicians, from Gwen Stefani to SZA, who have created music in the wake of this absurd cosmic event, and the dazzling 23-song setlist relied heavily on tracks from the album. The show seemed especially momentous considering Grande hasn’t been on tour since 2019, having since starred in two consecutive Wicked films and judged on The Voice.

But she wouldn’t be Grande if she didn’t inject a little of her signature malice into deeper musings. Fittingly, Grande kicked off her show at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena by dropping the stage curtain on “Yes, And?,” a swaggering dismissal of rumors about who she chose to perform alongside. (After her breakup in 2023, Grande became a tabloid punching bag when she started dating her evil boyfriend.) co-star Ethan Slater; They’ve since split.) Surrounded by a cadre of dancers and microphone in hand, Grande doubled down on the song’s unobtrusive spirit with shoulder shrugs and hand taps. She quickly unleashed the first of many whistles she would make this evening – as if to remind her opponents of that. she He possesses a gift like no other, a four-octave range.

The show’s first act underscored this unobtrusive attitude by launching into sultry tracks including “Situations,” a mysterious song about a relationship that has her “jumping through hoops” to make someone happy that also serves as a double-entendre about boudoir playfulness. She dons bunny ears – which were also spotted on many fans around the scene – and a saucy whip routine for her subversive take on the R&B classic The Boy is Mine which sees her not fighting another woman over a man, but rather showing romance as her girls support her. Even the show’s most poignant moment, with Grande standing alone on center stage with a digital repeat station and microphone, featured her layering her sultry vocals over one another, repeating a phrase from Eternal Sunshine’s title song for several minutes before launching into the full song: “I don’t care what people say.”

In images shown on screens between performances, Grande walked through a creepy, flooded house and looked at another version of herself connected to a memory-wiping device. As the show progresses, Grande sees this not as a gift but as her own curse, and destroys the computer. Parallel to this hit, the tightly sequenced show featured a middle section containing some of Grande’s more introspective numbers, including the shimmering Safety Net (a song about fear of the ultimate unknown: falling in love) before jumping into the club, with back-to-back anthems “One Last Time”, “Raining On Me” and “Break Free”. But her performance of “Dangerous Woman,” during which she pulled out a microphone stand like a curvy jazz singer, was the emotional high point of the night as Grande unleashed her pipes on different vocal notes.

After going through much of Eternal Sunshine, several of her beloved songs, and the moody Hate That I Made You Love Me from her upcoming album Petal, Grande closed the show by beaming down the light-filled rafters, showing that it’s possible to endure a lot and still find a way to end the show on a high note.