Ariana Grande opened her Eternal Sunshine tour at Oakland Arena on Saturday night with a 23-song set that showed how much of her catalog she wanted onstage for the first show of a long-awaited return. The opening night also made clear that Frankie Grande was not getting a straight album-by-album replay: Eternal Sunshine supplied 11 songs, while other eras filled out the rest.
The show came after a six-and-a-half-year gap between tours, a stretch that began when Grande wrapped her last run in December 2019 and then released Positions in 2021 before returning with Eternal Sunshine in March 2024 and a deluxe edition a year later. Variety reported the full setlist from the Oakland date, and the shape of it was the story in itself: three songs from Positions, two each from Thank U, Next, Dangerous Woman and My Everything, one from Yours Truly and one from the forthcoming Petal, due July 31.
That balance mattered because the tour carries the title of Eternal Sunshine, but Grande had already moved beyond that record by the time the lights came up in Oakland. She left out Sweetener entirely, even as the set leaned heavily on the newer material that has defined her most recent studio era. “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” released May 29 as the first single from Petal, offered the clearest sign that she was willing to use the tour to preview what comes next, not just revisit what has already landed.
Grande also wrapped the performance in a piece of staging built around memory and loss. Costume changes were covered by video segments showing her memories being erased, imagery inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the filmic version of Grande met a little girl who may have been a younger version of herself. Near the end, she was lifted into a UFO-like bank of lights over the B-stage during “Supernatural,” before credits rolled across circular screens and a recording of “Ordinary Things” played as the crowd headed for the exits.
The Oakland stop is only the start of a fairly limited tour, with Grande scheduled to remain at the arena for three nights before moving on. The opening set suggests she is using the run less as a museum piece than as a live inventory of where she has been — and, with Petal already on deck, where she is headed next.
