Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman Diaries docuseries: 11 important takeaways

Ariana Grande’s YouTube docuseries reveals an emotionally transparent Grande as we learn about her tour life and supportiveness.

While her fans prepared for the “thank u, next” music video to find its home on YouTube (and the list of most viewed videos in 24 hours), Ariana Grande released her four-part Dangerous Woman Diaries docuseries on Thursday, November 29.

The four-episode YouTube series documents her Dangerous Woman tour and her evolution as an artist and person. In the last year alone, Grande has rallied tremendous success and accomplishments. She nabbed a spot on the Billboard Hot 100 list, earned the most monthly Spotify listeners, and released a new album, sweetener, all while seemingly navigating a breakup, personal loss, and a grave tragedy.

Apart from her devastating letter to her fans regarding the Manchester Arena bombing on May 22, 2017, her docuseries touches on other raw emotions, many of which we’ve experienced with Grande along her musical journey.

Throughout the years, Grande’s musical style has transitioned from Broadway performances to incorporating ’50s-esque R&B influences with multiple vocal and lyrical rest stops in between. Alongside her musical growth, Grande’s lyrics have also evolved through her career. Because the artist has found a true home in her latest albums, Grande explores what Dangerous Woman and sweetener mean to her during her YouTube docuseries.

However, her musical journey isn’t the only focal point of this docuseries, which is why we’ve listed a few of our favorite takeaways from the mini-series — including the emotional turbulence along the way.

As a preface, Grande’s letter to her fans regarding her continued recovery and thoughts following the Manchester attack is obviously a significant part of her docuseries. However, we don’t want to add it to our list of highlights because we don’t want to celebrate a tragedy that has afflicted Ariana Grande and so many of her fans.

1. Her friends and crew support her and listen to all her projects beforehand

The first episode opens up with Grande’s friends and fellow tour members listening to her songs on her sweetener album, which was still in production at the time of the Dangerous Woman Diaries.

Having friends who are genuinely eager to listen to her new work and rightfully hype it up is a beautifully sentimental way to start the mini-series, and it speaks to the level of trust Grande and her inner circle has with each other. Honestly, we’re just blessed that she felt comfortable enough to share these snippets of her life with us.

2. sweetener allowed her to find her comfort zone and amplify herself

Speaking on her sweetener album, which was underway at the time of filming, Grande says, “It just feels super close to home.”

It’s clear that Grande’s personal voice comes through strongest in her latest album, and we hope that she continues to build upon this throughout her future singles and albums alike.

3. The tour crew supports each other

Before each stop on the Dangerous Woman tour, Grande tells her crew of backup dancers how much she loves and appreciates them. Even this brief gesture of appreciation shows how Grande and her crew alike sincerely want to motivate each other to do their best on and off stage.

Within the docuseries, we see each individual person commemorate the tour and their friendships by making lists of things they had hoped to learn during the tour and things that actually took away from their time there. Their lists divulged into nostalgic memories about their times together, making for one of many sweet moments in the docuseries.

4. Grande and her crew are just a bunch of dorks

When they aren’t trying to replenish their sleep cycles, Grande and her tour team are just a bunch of goofs, and we love it.

In their spare downtime on tour and during their pre-tour prep, she and her tour family just do nothing and laugh. In one particular scene, they partake in sugarless cough drop taste testing, which was allegedly disgusting by the way.

5. She exercises her inspiration

In the first episode, Grande notes that she got her inspiration for her VMA performance while she was running on the treadmill. Naturally, we have several questions. Do we need to work out for a certain allotted amount of time for our own inspiration to hit us? Do we need to use a treadmill to reap the mid-workout inspiration? And can you tell that we’re desperate for inspiration and excuses to exercise regularly?

6. But of course, she sings while getting ready

See, Grande is just like us—she sings will putting her makeup on and getting ready for the day. Except she can actually sing, she has a professional makeup artist to do her makeup, and the thing she’s getting ready for is a worldwide tour (all very much unlike us).

We’ll still take the very reductive resemblance though.

7. Grande puts the stress of a tour into perspective

As outsiders who don’t entertain millions of fans, we know that preparing for an album tour is mentally and physically strenuous, but Grande puts it into context when she says in episode three that she sings 21 different songs live every night.

Grande and her crew repeatedly mention how they devote their days off to recuperating. Excuse us, we’re losing our voices just thinking about that.

8. There’s a backup plan if she has diarrhea on stage

Well, not really, she jokingly made this remark in the series. However, we’re sure Grande would recover from any embarrassing blunder on-stage like the queen she is.

9. Meet Grande’s on-tour shadow

Not all of her pets follow her on tour, but her dog Toulose (who is in her “thank u, next” video, for the record) acts as her personal shadow during her tour. Maybe he’s soaking in her stage presence, so he can become a renowned show pupper. Or maybe just enjoys barking at the sound check team. Regardless, we know that Toulouse is happy to join his mom on her tours.

10. She deeply cares about her fans

Okay, we already knew about this, seeing as Grande constantly interacts with her fans on and off social media. Even when she’s on tour, she answers fan-led questions, hypes them up during backstage meet and greets, and she cares about what they think more than any critic’s or publication’s opinion.

In the first episode of the series, Grande says how she doesn’t create music for an award or notoriety, instead, she does it for her fans. She’s “more curious about what [her] fans have to say” she continues in the opening episode. Even in her closing episode, she mentions how she hopes fans can see themselves in her music.

11. We’re proud of Grande

We don’t know Grande and we may never meet her (here’s hoping!), but we’re incredibly proud of her tenacity and persistence and for being a positive presence for herself, her fans, and her crew.

Now that we’ve gone through the entire four-part docuseries, as well as several sob sessions, we can’t wait to see where her music and support system takes her.

These takeaways don’t even start to dissect the impact from Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman Diaries YouTube docuseries. Nevertheless, we’re grateful for Grande being a motivational figure in living history and that she let us see a preview into her life as an artist.