Ariana Grande has revealed that she recorded three versions of her record-breaking track Thank U, Next, to account for “up[s] and down[s]” in her relationship with former fiancé Pete Davidson.
The singer admitted that she was “very nervous” to release the break-up anthem, in which she shouts out ex-boyfriends and thanks them for helping her to grow, and said that she initially wrote a version which didn’t feature any names at all.
“It was still like, ‘OK, I’m embracing my mistakes and what I’ve done’… but it was just less direct,” she told the Zach Sang Show. “And everyone, including me, was kind of like, ‘this is not the version.’ But I was also trying to be protective, you know?”
She went on to explain that in addition to the name-free track, she then recorded two further versions of the song: one in which she ended up with Davidson and another in which they parted ways, with the latter eventually released in November.
“In my relationship at the time, things were up and down and on and off, and so I didn’t know what was gonna happen,” Grande said.
“And then we got back together, so I had to make a different version of it, and then we broke up again, so we ended up going with that version.
“There was a version where I was getting married, there’s a version where I’m not getting married, there’s a version with nothing – [where] we’re not talking about anything.”
The 25-year-old described the decision to namecheck her former partners as “a big risk and a very scary thing to do,” but confirmed that “everyone that [she is] still in touch with has been very supportive of it.”
Grande and Saturday Night Live comic Davidson started dating in May 2018, and announced their engagement the following month.
However, the romance proved short-lived, with the pair parting ways in October, weeks after the death of Grande’s ex, rapper Mac Miller.
