twenty-two people were killed leaving her show. thirteen days later she went back to the city and staged the benefit concert in under two weeks.
the short answer
on 22 may 2017 a suicide bomber attacked the foyer of the manchester arena as her audience was leaving, killing twenty-two people. thirteen days later she returned to the city for one love manchester, a benefit concert at old trafford cricket ground on 4 june 2017 in front of 50,000 people, broadcast live by the bbc. it raised more than £10 million for the victims' families and is, by any measure, the most consequential thing in her career.
22 may 2017
the show was the manchester date of the dangerous woman tour — seventy-seven shows across five continents, the biggest production she had built, and the tour that was supposed to be the coronation of the record that had finally stopped asking permission.
the bomb was detonated in the arena foyer as the audience was leaving. twenty-two people were killed and hundreds were injured. the tour was suspended within hours.
the thirteen days
the decision to come back was made almost immediately, and the logistics of it are genuinely extraordinary. a benefit concert at that scale would normally take three to six months to assemble: a venue, a broadcast partner, a bill of headline acts, insurance, and — in this case — a security operation for an event that had just been given the clearest possible reason to be a target.
it was done in under two weeks. the 55,000 tickets went in twenty minutes, with free tickets given to people who had been at the original show.
who played it
the bill was assembled out of everybody who said yes: coldplay, miley cyrus, katy perry, justin bieber, the black eyed peas, liam gallagher, take that, pharrell, mac miller, niall horan, robbie williams, imogen heap, and the parrs wood high school choir — a local school choir whose performance with her is the moment most people who watched the broadcast remember.
she closed on somewhere over the rainbow, alone. it raised more than £10 million for the we love manchester emergency fund, and she was later made an honorary citizen of the city.
what it left behind
she finished the tour. sweetener, released the following year, is explicitly about that period and refuses to be triumphant about it — the closing track runs to exactly five minutes and twenty-two seconds, and ends in silence.
the manchester worker bee, the city's symbol since the industrial revolution, became the emblem of the response and was tattooed on a very large number of people including her. and everything about her public life since reads differently for it: the seriousness she is now afforded is not unrelated to the fact that she was twenty-three years old and did that.
questions people ask
what happened at the ariana grande manchester concert?
on 22 may 2017 a suicide bomber attacked the foyer of the manchester arena as the audience was leaving her show, killing twenty-two people and injuring hundreds.
when was one love manchester?
4 june 2017, thirteen days after the attack, at old trafford cricket ground in front of 50,000 people. it was broadcast live by the bbc.
who performed at one love manchester?
coldplay, miley cyrus, katy perry, justin bieber, the black eyed peas, liam gallagher, take that, pharrell, mac miller, niall horan, robbie williams, imogen heap and the parrs wood high school choir, with ariana grande headlining.
how much did one love manchester raise?
more than £10 million for the we love manchester emergency fund, which supported the victims' families.
why is the bee associated with ariana grande?
the worker bee has been a symbol of manchester since the industrial revolution. after the attack it became the emblem of the city's response, and large numbers of people — including her — had it tattooed.