Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Tour kicked off in Oakland this weekend, bringing with it some noteworthy lyric tweaks in a performance of the title track to the three-time Grammy winner’s 2019 album thank u, next.
As fans are aware, the bridge of the track, which hit No. 1 on the Hot 100, finds Grande building on the song’s themes of making peace with failed relationships.
“One day I’ll walk down the aisle / Holdin’ hands with my mama,” Grande sings in the studio version of the song. “I’ll be thankin’ my dad / ‘Cause she grew from the drama.”
At this weekend’s tour opener, however, Grande—perhaps in reference to her revealing to Marc Maron last year that her parents, though divorced, had become “best friends” at her insistence—changed the last line to be significantly more all-encompassing, like so: “I’ll be thankin’ my dad / ‘Cause we all grew from the drama.”
Grande, whose latest album, petal, is out in July, also had some fun with another lyric, seemingly acknowledging her own divorce from Dalton Gomez in 2024.
The Eternal Sunshine Tour continues this week with two more shows in Oakland on June 9 and June 10, respectively, before heading to Los Angeles for back-to-back dates at the Crypto Arena in Los Angeles. Additional multi-night stops are slated for Inglewood, Austin, Sunrise, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Boston, Montreal, Chicago, and London. The latter will see Grande performing 10 straight shows at the O2 Arena, with the tour closer scheduled for Sept. 1.
