Ariana Grande Lets Her Hair Down, Takes Over Nashville Amid CMA Fest

Nashville has been swarmed with country music fans this weekend, all due to the annual CMA Fest that sees the genre’s A-Listers take over the city. However, they were all eclipsed on Friday night when one of the biggest pop stars in the world descended on the city: Ariana Grande.

Grande’s career has taken her from Nickelodeon actress to one of the most admired singers on the planet. However, she’s nearly shaken everything about the pop star image that most would see as clichéd, and instead crafted a sound and image than sets her apart from her peers.

Her Nashville stop at Bridgestone Arena, like her other dates on the Sweetener World Tour, was perfect evidence of that fact and her current position as one of the sharpest pop stars of the era.

If the vibes of Grande’s music weren’t enough to convince you that you would be getting more than your cookie-cutter pop show, the set’s opening number surely did. Grande emerged from the stage floor, hidden in a mass of dancers as they all sat around a long table, in a visual reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Fittingly, this was to accompany “God is a Woman,” Grande’s empowering 2018 single from her album Sweetener.

From there, Grande slowly emerged from the mass of dancers — with her hair down, as die-hard fans would note — as she went into her moody 2019 highlight “bad idea,” before fully coming out to play with the flirty “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.” As Grande and her ensemble strutted around an oval catwalk and performed some sensual choreography with chairs, it was clear to see that this wasn’t a banal affair.

The Sweetener World Tour has a chic-tinge to it that many pop and R&B acts gloss over in favor of cheap, crowd-pleasing theatrics. This is mainly due to Grande simply presenting herself as star with the talent to back it up. The celebrity you saw in the headlines and heard on the radio was who you got, without an effort to dumb things down to be more relatable. She’s mega-talented and knows how to put on a show, and that’s what mattered.

The aforementioned section was just one of five acts — plus an encore — that the 25-year-old rolled through during her set. Each section was divided by a brief pause that included visuals, that ranged from a rambling home video from Grande’s childhood to a peculiar crystal ball visual set to an autotuned cover of a Frank Ocean song.

Those odd visuals also played into the core parts of the set as well. A kaleidoscopic disco ball, distorted close-ups of the always-perfect pop star’s face and a low-resolution handheld camera feed, which also accompanied a nearly punk version of “the light is coming” — all contributed to an interesting visual experience, even if you weren’t sitting close. These off-kilter moments were contrasted with some rather beautiful selections, such as when a giant globe lowered down from the rafters to create a starfield for “NASA” and a large moon prop to accompany “get well soon.”

After Grande went through a full selection of act changes — with costume changes to match — she capped the night off with a one-two punch of highlights.

First up was the emotionally resonant “no tears left to cry,” which was her first song released following the 2017 bombing of her concert at Manchester Arena in the U.K. It was a triumphant moment, with a powerful vocal from Grande paired with M. C. Escher-inspired visuals and classy choreography from her team.

After that satisfying cut, Grande left the stage to rousing claps and spontaneous chants of “Ari,” before returning for an encore of her smash hit “thank u, next.” While “no tears left to cry” is about moving past large-scale trauma, “thank u, next” is all about moving past internal struggles with love and served as a cherry on top of the whole show. She capped it off with a victory lap around the catwalk with her crew (as they all waved LGBT pride flags, as well) while the song’s outro played and confetti rained down.

The Sweetener World Tour is quite the experience for any Grande fan hoping to see their idol in full force. Grande does not disappoint and offers one of the more interesting and flat-out cool performances of any pop artist working today, hands down.

Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for AG