Dear Gossips,

Ariana Grande played the first of five shows at Barclays Center in Brooklyn last night and while there was a brief audio issue, the most gossip-notable moment from the concert happened during “thank u, next”. You’ll recall, this is the song where she lists off all her exes, mostly warmly, and moves on to herself… which does not appear to be what she’s doing IRL.

For weeks now there’s been speculation that she and Ricky Alvarez are back together. And during her last several performances she’s changed Ricky’s lyric – on the original track it goes like this:

“Wrote some songs about Ricky
Now I listen and laugh”

But last night she sang it like this:

“Wrote some songs about Ricky
We always find our way back”

As you can see from the reaction of her dancers and hear the reaction in the crowd, everyone knew exactly what she was getting at:

Ricky used to be one of Ari’s backup dancers. He was her boyfriend at the time of the donut licking scandal. They broke up in 2016, but seemed to remain on good terms because he was invited to subsequent promotional events and they continued to exchange pleasantries on socials even after the split. Lately he’s been spotted in the audience while she’s on tour, at multiple shows.

And then of course they were photographed over Independence Day weekend in Florida near her parents’ home shopping at Whole Foods.

Interestingly enough, ten years ago they were also papped at Whole Foods, only back then it was in LA. But Ricky’s wearing almost the exact same outfit.

Ariana Grande shops at Whole Foods with boyfriend Ricky Alvarez, 2016

Rebounding with an ex is so… popstar. All the pop girlies do it, from Madonna to Britney to Rihanna to Miley to Taylor and now Ariana. This is hardly a surprise.

In other Ariana news, her new album, petal, releases in just over two weeks on July 31. The first single, “hate that i made you love me” debuted in the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and has remained in the top 10 though I’m not sure it has the kind of cultural impact she was hoping for. That said, I was similarly ambivalent to the first single off Eternal Sunshine and then the full album came out and it was probably the album I listened to the most in 2024, so I’m curious to see if petal will hit the same way… although, um, I’m not looking forward to whatever discourse there might be over how much of it is about Ethan Slater.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Photo credits: Backgrid

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