Just when we thought we knew everything there is to know about Ariana Grande‘s massive single “Thank U, Next,” Grande shared some juicy new behind-the-scenes details about the song in a new interview.
Guesting on the Zach Sang Show, Grande revealed that she wrote several different versions of “Thank U, Next.” Because she was initially unsure about naming her exes in the song’s lyrics, she wrote one version that more indirectly referenced her past loves. The opening lines in this version were “They say I’m too young / Had too many boyfriends.”
While Grande was writing and recording the song this fall, her relationship with Pete Davidson was in a particularly tumultuous spot. Grande revealed that they took a break before their official October split, and she wrote a version of the song in the event Davidson didn’t become one of the exes. “In my relationship at the time, things were so up and down and on and off, and so I didn’t know what was gonna happen,” Grande said. “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 back [to the original version.]”
The “Thank U, Next” that we know mentions how Grande “even almost got married,” but the singer wrote yet another version to account for her potential marriage to Davidson. Grande said, “There’s a version where I was getting married [to Pete], a version where I’m not getting married. But we all knew that the first version was gonna be the version that we ultimately went with. I just wanted to cover all the bases.”
“Cover all the bases” and account for an equally probable marriage and breakup. Young love, am I right?
Watch Grande’s full interview on the Zach Sang Show above.
