Ariana Grande Recounts Near-Death Experience On ‘Honeymoon Tour’

Ariana Grande’s career — arguably about to head into the next stratosphere with her first-ever headlining arena tour — almost never made it past opening night.

In a video clip Ariana posted to her “Honeymoon Diary” YouTube channel, the singer is seen chatting with her dancers following the opening performance in Kansas City. During the song “Love Me Harder,” the wooden lift meant to raise her up on stage broke. Grande, with an incredulous look on her face, blurted out to her crew, “I almost died!”

“You need to know what happened during ‘Love Me Harder’,” Grande said to her crew. “For those of you watching I’m supposed to be going up in this lift for ‘Love You Harder’ in this wooden thing that raises up. So the wooden thing breaks and I’m about to be crushed by some mechanical, metal [stuff].”

After Ariana is finished sharing with her dancers, the video cuts backstage where she introduces us to the hero of the day, a guitar tech by the name of Ruff who saved Grande when she was dangling for her life during the song. Donning a pair of Ariana’s cat ears, Ruff details his version of events.

“Tuning guitars I hear this crack. I hear the mic drop so I thought, ‘Oh, Ari dropped the mic. I better go try and catch it.’ I went around and I see her caught in the thing and the board is up and she’s just dangling there. A whole bunch of people are yelling ‘Stop the lift!'”

Ariana made a note that despite the calamity, she held the tune the whole time as well. She hugged Ruff once again for saving her, before snatching back her trademark cat ears. Ironically enough, as reported by the Inquisitr, Ariana’s most recent video for her song “One More Time” featured the singer on the brink of death. She could never have guessed that it actually might have come to pass on stage.

Dire situations aside, Grande has to hope the “Honeymoon Tour” can continue a bit more smoothly going forward. She’d also prefer it if the reviews were more generous as well. According to the Journal Sentinel, however, Ariana did not score high marks for her opening night performance.

“The Bradley Center may have been filled to near-capacity with automatically adoring teen and preteen ‘Arianators.’ But the Milwaukee stop on Grande’s ‘Honeymoon Tour’ didn’t signify the birth of the next superstar. Most of the time, it felt like a dress rehearsal.”

Watch Ariana Grande recount her near-death experience below:

[Credit: Ethan Miller / Getty Images]