Ariana Grande Opens Eternal Sunshine Tour With New Material and a Six-Year Gap Filled

Ariana Grande began her first tour in over six years Friday night at Oakland Arena, compressing a career’s worth of pop dominance into three acts and 23 songs. The Eternal Sunshine tour opener moved from early hits like “Break Free” and “Into You” to more recent cuts, with several tracks performed live for the first time.

Among the debuts were “Dandelion,” “Just Like Magic,” and “Warm,” alongside the newly released “Hate That I Made You Love Me.” That song is the sole preview of Petal, Grande’s forthcoming album due July 31. She premiered the track in late May with a video starring Justin Long, and its live treatment here felt less like a sneak peek than a deliberate placement—a signal that new material will hold its own against a set list heavy with streaming-era monuments.

The show pulled equally from Grande’s catalog and her instinct for sequencing. “Thank U, Next,” “7 Rings,” and “Rain On Me” (with Lady Gaga’s part performed to backing) arrived among deeper selections like “Safety Net” and “Honeymoon Avenue.” A backing band stayed largely unobtrusive, leaving the vocal lines to carry the emotional arc.

The tour runs through August, closing with five nights at London’s O2 Arena. For an artist whose output has rarely paused, the live absence since 2019 made this a reintroduction as much as a victory lap. In Oakland, Grande seemed aware of that tension, balancing spectacle with the quiet knottier corners of her discography.