Ariana Grande spent the entire Eternal Sunshine Tour quietly rewriting history one lyric at a time, and the final night in London was the loudest version of that yet.
At the last date of her Eternal Sunshine Tour at London’s O2 Arena on September 1, Grande changed the Ricky Alvarez line in “Thank U, Next” to “Wrote some songs about Ricky, I’m tryna make him my last.” The crowd lost it immediately. Even her backup dancers joined in on the reaction.
This was not the first time she touched the lyric on this tour. Back on June 26, during her birthday show in Austin, which Alvarez attended, she sang “I know he’s still got my back.”
Two days before that, she tried “And they still kinda slap.” Then, at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on July 13, she changed it to “We always find our way back,” which already felt like a significant upgrade from the original.
The original line from the 2018 song reads “Wrote some songs about Ricky, now I listen and laugh,” a reference to their relationship, which began in 2015 before ending in 2016.
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Alvarez himself was famously unbothered but slightly offended by the original lyric. Grande recalled him telling her, “Why did I get the worst line? Everyone else’s line is so nice, and mine is like, Man f*** him, he’s trash.” She told him she could have said that, but chose “now I listen and laugh” instead because it did not work out.
A lot has changed since then. Grande and Alvarez have remained friends in the decade since their split, and their public reunion came weeks after news broke that she and Wicked costar Ethan Slater had quietly ended their three-year relationship. Grande spent the Fourth of July weekend in Florida with Alvarez and her family, which at that point was already telling enough.
Going from “now I listen and laugh” in 2018 to “I’m tryna make him my last” at the final show of her biggest tour is not subtle. Grande has never really been subtle when it comes to this particular song. The Eternal Sunshine Tour is over. Whatever comes next apparently involves Ricky.
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