Ariana Grande Owns Greenwich: Ten Sold-Out Nights at The O2

There are London residencies, and then there was this. Ariana Grande played ten nights at The O2, opening on 15 August and closing on 1 September — the 15th, 16th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, 24th, 27th, 28th, 31st and 1 September — and every one of them sold out. They are her first shows in six years, since the record-breaking Sweetener World Tour, and they are the Eternal Sunshine Tour's only European dates. If you wanted to see her on this continent, it was London or nowhere.

The timing is almost rude. Days before opening night, her album petal debuted at Number 1 on the UK Official Albums Chart — her sixth consecutive UK Number 1, a run unbroken since Dangerous Woman in 2016, through Sweetener, thank u, next, Positions and eternal sunshine. Official Charts noted the chart-topping week landed directly ahead of the ten sold-out O2 shows. Across the Atlantic, petal also handed her a seventh Number 1 on the Billboard 200.

Six albums, six Number 1s, and the only European dates on Earth are in SE10.

Time Out puts the residency's expected reach at around 200,000 fans — the biggest run of dates at the venue this year. For two and a half weeks, the centre of the pop universe has a Greenwich postcode, and the North Greenwich tube queue becomes a nightly pilgrimage. Doors at 6:30pm, if you are one of the lucky ones.

For everyone working in music in this city, the takeaway is simpler: the biggest artists in the world now treat London as the residency town. The stage comes to us.