Ariana Grande Shares Story Behind New Song “Pete Davidson”

Hours before her fourth studio album, Sweetener, dropped, Ariana Grande stopped by the Tonight Show to tell Jimmy Fallon about her new music. The pop star and the late-night host had a mini-listening party, where they sampled several previously unheard tracks for the audience.

One of those songs included “Pete Davidson,” a 1 minute, 14 second interlude named after her comedian fiance. In it, Grande intones, “I know that you’re my soulmate and all that.” She told Fallon how she ended up choosing Davidson’s moniker as the title.

“I just made it and I sent it to him and I didn’t know what to call it,” she said, adding that she recorded the song “a week after we started hanging out and stuff.” Grande continued, “So I just called it ‘Pete.’ It was either going to be that or ‘This Is About Pete Davidson.’ I was like, ‘Why not? You know?’ Just be direct.”

The former child actress — who first met Davidson in 2016 on the set of Saturday Night Live, when she appeared on the show as a host and musical guest — then recounted their love story to Fallon.

“We met on SNL, like two or three years ago or whenever that was, and we never exchanged numbers or anything. We weren’t even friends for a long time, but I had the biggest crush in the whole world on him the whole time — like, forever,” she revealed. “And my friends used to make fun of me for it and all that stuff.”

Though their initial interaction was minimal, Grande went on to say that she predicted she’d end up tying the knot with the SNL star.

“I left his writers room when we were writing skits and stuff for the show and my tour manager was in the hallway. And I’m not a crush-y person. I don’t have crushes on people I don’t know,” she said. “But I left and I jokingly said to my tour manager, ‘I’m marrying him 100 percent.’ I was like, ‘I’m literally marrying him.’ We weren’t even friends. I didn’t even see him at the afterparty.”

Grande’s comments come days after Davidson told GQ that he proposed to the singer “the day I met her.” It was revealed in June that the two were indeed engaged after just weeks of dating.

“I was like, ‘Hey, I’ll marry you tomorrow,'” he told the magazine. “She was calling my bluff. I sent her a picture [of engagement rings]. I was like, ‘Do you like any of these?’ She was like, ‘Those are my favorite ones,’ and I was like, ‘Sick.'”

Elsewhere in Grande’s interview with Fallon, she shared the story behind Madonna’s feature in the music video for her single “God Is a Woman,” in which Her Madgesty is heard speaking as the voice of God. According to Grande, it came as the result of a simple text message.

“Yeah I texted her, which is so cool. I can text [with Madonna],” she said with a laugh. “Without Madonna, I wouldn’t be able to make a song like that. She paved the way for all of us and has been here fighting that fight way longer than any of us. She’s the coolest. She’s a bad bitch.”

Grande also performed a tribute to Aretha Franklin and spoke about the Queen of Soul’s impact. Watch Grande’s Tonight Show interview above.