Ariana Grande appears to have some musical surprises up her sleeve. The Wicked star made waves at the 2025 Oscars on March 2 when she casually dropped hints about an album drop—an interesting development considering her recent comments about pivoting to theater.
When asked about the status of a deluxe edition of her 2024 album Eternal Sunshine being "in the can," Grande—dressed in a bubble-inspired pink gown covered in sparkling crystals on the red carpet—gave Variety a coy response.
"The next step is...It means it must come out," she said. The 31-year-old Grammy winner—currently nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Wicked—remained deliberately vague about timing, instead opting to reference the film that inspired her last album.
"They did the Brighter Days Memory Erasure treatment to me so I'm having trouble remembering the details," she teased, referring to the fictional clinic in the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. "They're foggy, because at the Brighter Days Clinic, they do the Memory Erasure."
Grande continued the bit, suggesting details about the upcoming project are "a little foggy," adding, "I'll have to go back to the clinic and see if they can restore my memory."
When host Marc Malkin tried to pin her down with the word "soon," Grande held firm. "So you have to learn the language of my fans because soon means 10 days or less. I'm not allowed to use that word at this moment," she explained. Malkin pressed: "So, it's not less than 10 days?"
"I'm not going to use that word today. I'll say that," Grande responded, leaving fans to decode her careful word choice. Her parting advice? "Just keep your eyes peeled...That's all I'm saying."
This subtle music tease comes less than four months after Grande revealed on the Las Culturistas podcast that her Wicked experience had shifted her professional focus from pop music toward musical theater.
"It is my heart," she said of acting. "I'm gonna say something so scary—it's gonna scare the absolute shit out of my fans and everyone, but I love them, and they'll deal, and we'll be here forever. I'm always going to make music, I'm always going to go on stage, I'm always going to do pop stuff, I pinky promise. But I don't think doing it at the rate I've been doing it for the past 10 years is where I see the next 10 years."
