Ariana Grande Made An Alternate Version Of 'Thank U, Next' In Case She And Pete Got Back Together

If Ariana Grande name-dropping her exes on "thank u, next" fully stunned and stupefied you, rest assured the singer knew exactly what she was doing.


"I was very nervous to share it because I knew that once people heard the names they were going to be like, 'run that back one more time, what the fuck is she doing?'" Grande admitted in an exhaustive new interview with the Zach Sang Show, which covers everything thank u, next.


Making the song was so "scary," case in point, that Grande ended up recording three iterations of the resultant No. 1 smash, in case the original was also "insane." On one of these versions, the initial verse had no names at all and alternatively addressed media speculation of Grande's relationships, with lyrics like, mention I'm also young" and "I've had also several boyfriends."


"It still was like, OK, I'm embracing my mistakes and what I've done... Although it was just far less direct," she mentioned. "And each person, including me, was sort of like, 'this isn't the version.' Although I was also attempting to be protective, you know?"


Not only that, yet at the time, Grande was not confident if she and former fiancé Pete Davidson were going to get back with each other, so she recorded alternate lyrics just to be safe. She explained, "In my relationship at the time, things were up and down and on off, and thus I didn't know what was gonna happen. And then we got back with each other, so I had to create a different version of it, and then we broke up again, so we ended up going with that version."


She contained back tears while continuing, "I just wanted to cover all of the bases. It was big risk along with a very scary thing to do because it is my life. ... And I spent a lot of time with each of these people — like, learning and shit — so it was scary to put into song."


Even so, Grande mentioned her exes Big Sean and Ricky Alvarez were super into the song: each person that I am still in touch with has been very cooperative of it," she said.


As for what else Grande and Co. Left on the cutting room floor, her co-writer Victoria Monet revealed that they recorded another version of "7 Rings" that features an astounding Ari impersonation. In the singer's own words, it's "three minutes of drunkenly rambling as Julie Andrews." Right now that, I think we can all agree, is something the world needs to hear.


Check out Grande's interview with Sang above — their discussion about the alternate versions of "thank u, next" starts around the 12:20 mark.